You can now trade Bitcoin with a tweet – How Elon Musk’s X made it happen

Elon Musk’s company X has changed its U.S. Cashtag Partner Program from a tool for market information to now allowing users to access trading platforms.

Previously, users used Cashtag to view the asset’s price, chart, and related posts if someone posted about Bitcoin [BTC] using $BTC or about Tesla using $TSLA.

Following Elon Musk’s Bitcoin wager, those pages will display a “Trade” button – for now the feature is available to U.S. users only.

Here, it’s important to note that X itself is not buying or selling the Bitcoin or stocks on the user’s behalf. Instead, it’s acting more like a bridge, and will direct users to a participating exchange. Mridul Singhai, Product Engineering Lead at X, elaborated, 

Cashtags close the gap between a ticker on the timeline and the market itself.

A big leap for Cashtags

Elon Musk has chosen Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, Interactive Brokers, and Moomoo as the initial U.S. partner group.

For their part, Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken will be primarily associated with cryptocurrency trading. Meanwhile, Interactive Brokers and Moomoo will provide access to stocks and other traditional financial products.

For those unaware, Cashtags have existed on X for years, but their original purpose was mainly to help users discover conversations around financial assets. But with this new feature, X subsequently made them more interactive by adding market data, real-time prices, and charts.

Remarking on the same, Monique Pintarelli, head of global advertising at SpaceX AI, said,

People come to X to discover what’s happening, shape the conversation, and act in real-time on what matters to them. Our Cashtag partners make it possible to move seamlessly from discovery and conversation to a brokerage, without breaking the moment.

The Big Charts feature strengthens this system further. Now, instead of seeing only a small price chart, users can open a larger interactive chart for supported assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum [ETH], Ripple [XRP], Solana [SOL], Dogecoin [DOGE], Tesla, Strategy, and Coinbase.

This comes on the heels of Musk inadvertently being drawn into a memecoin scam after hackers compromised Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis’ X account and posted content promoting SLINK. 

Final Summary

• Earlier, users could tap the Cashtag to view the asset’s price, chart, and related posts if someone posted about Bitcoin or Tesla.
• Now users get the option to trade with the help of partners including Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, Interactive Brokers, and Moomoo.