What Does Elon Musk Have Planned for Twitter?

Elon Musk took over Twitter last week, as the new CEO completed the $44 billion deal on October 27 and marked the event with his usual over-the-top shenanigans.

As usual, the media world, which spends most of its day on the social media platform, has been obsessing about his motives:

Did he buy Twitter to advance a hard-right political agenda? Is he planning for world domination? Or he just wants to reign the world payment kingdom?

Truth be told, Musk is known to be a strong crypto proponent despite some unexpected actions that he took regarding this topic. His multinational company, Tesla, owns nearly $220 million worth of Bitcoin. This figure previously stood at around $1.5 billion, but the company was forced to sell 75% of its BTC holdings in July this year due to bear market pressures. In 2021, Musk also revealed that he had personally invested in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.

In fact, one of the first features to be launched in the Elon Musk era is a crypto service called NFT Tweet Tiles. It was launched on October 28, just a day after Musk took over the reins at Twitter, and allows users to buy, sell, and display NFTs directly through Tweets. Currently, the feature works in partnership with four marketplaces: Rarible, Magic Eden, Dapper Labs and Jump.trade, leaving OpenSea, the world's largest NFT marketplace, out of this service for now.

A few days later, on October 29, Binance also pledged allegiance with Musk, as the crypto exchange is setting up an entire team to look into the current issues caused by Twitter bots, after it confirmed investing USD 500 million in Musk’s Takeover.

Musk's move should also bode well for Dogecoin. His tweets alone are usually enough to cause large price spikes for the meme coin. 

"I'm mainly supporting Doge, frankly," said Musk during a recent appearance on the Full Send podcast. Therefore, it is no surprise that Dogecoin has rallied over 107% in the last seven days.

This being said, the whole crypto space is waiting for Musk’s next step to see if it will break it or make it. In fact, if Musk did decide to have crypto play a bigger role on Twitter, here are some ways he could do it:

How can Musk intertwine crypto and Twitter?

• Bots and spam on Twitter are huge pain points for Musk, and helped spark a contentious legal battle that put his acquisition of the company in jeopardy. The issue is particularly important in crypto, where spam accounts impersonate famous figures like Musk in order to promote scams involving fake crypto giveaways. But some digital-asset enthusiasts believe that using blockchain could help reduce bots on Twitter. A blockchain-based identity verification tool or an NFT passport could be options for promoting Musk’s goal of wanting to “authenticate all real humans” on Twitter.

• Freedom of speech is close to Musk’s heart, and he intends to lift the company’s lifelong bans on users. Those values align with those of many crypto believers dedicated to the ethos of decentralization promoted by blockchain. They think that a single entity shouldn’t make major decisions over how a platform is managed. While Musk could potentially implement a token-based voting system that allows users to have more say over what happens on Twitter, it’s important to note that his potential embrace of crypto is a double-edged sword. While adding more crypto elements on Twitter could expand mainstream usage of digital assets, it will further consolidate Musk’s influence over an industry that many want to be as decentralized as possible.

• Musk has already expressed ambitions of turning Twitter into a “super app” and spoken admiringly of China’s WeChat platform, which can handle messaging, games, payments and video streaming. With other aspiring super app creators like Revolut Ltd. expanding into crypto, it would make sense if Musk’s vision included digital assets as well. Allowing more cryptocurrencies for tipping could be a first step, with Dogecoin being a likely top candidate given Musk’s love of the token.

• Other mainstream social media platforms like Instagram are diving further into NFTs. Though Musk has mocked these assets in the past, including Twitter’s decision to allow authenticated NFT profile pictures, he could introduce more NFT features, such as a marketplace or the ability for users to create a profile represented by an NFT that gives them greater ownership over their content - a practice already implemented by decentralized social media platform Lens Protocol. These measures could ensure that Twitter doesn’t fall behind other social media giants in terms of crypto adoption.

It is a payment kind of thing

Nevertheless, many are questioning the motives of Musk’s takeover, saying that he wants to dominate the payment world. But why?

Musk was one of the pioneers of PayPal, the giant payment platform in the late ’90s that later on made him a billionaire. Payments are in Musk’s blood. One of his first companies was a payments business called X—a name he resurrected for a Twitter product he has claimed will reach 104 million users by 2028.