The social platform X will launch a Smart Cashtags feature, allowing users to trade stocks and crypto directly from its timeline. This is one more step for the social media giant in its approach to providing financial services.
How Smart Cashtags Bridge Social Discovery and Trade Execution
The Smart Cashtags feature will enhance X’s current $TICKER system by allowing users to create clickable links by writing symbols with a dollar sign in front of them. When users tap on Smart Cashtags, they will see a live price chart, plus aggregated tweets related to the asset and buy/sell buttons embedded within the app. Importantly, X has made it clear that it is not going to act as a broker or execute trades; rather, the platform will provide tools for obtaining financial data and connecting to licensed third-party companies for actual execution. Thus, X will not have any custodial liability.
The Smart Cashtags Application Programming Interface (API) will work in almost real-time for all assets minted on the blockchain. Therefore, even small-cap tokens not listed on any centralized exchanges can appear next to large-cap stocks such as NVIDIA.
Part of Musk’s Broader “Everything App” Vision
The introduction of Smart Cashtags represents a deliberate step in Elon Musk’s long-stated ambition to transform X into an “everything app” akin to China’s WeChat. Smart Cashtags will function in concert with X Money (a peer-to-peer payment system currently in limited beta testing with Visa as its first partner) to create a single product.
X has a huge advantage in having more than 600 million active users worldwide and can test out integrated financial products at scale since it holds licenses to transmit money in more than 40 U.S. states. Bier reiterated that while X is supportive of the crypto movement, any applications that incentivize spam or platform manipulation will be aggressively flagged because such activities “have a significant negative impact on the experiences of millions of users.”
