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X’s ‘everything app’ push continues as Elon Musk tests video game streaming

During his stream, Elon Musk said that X has plans to integrate streaming services with Xbox and PS5, but has no plans of trying to be better than specialised streaming platforms.

X, formerly Twitter, has made another step toward becoming an “everything app” after Elon Musk tested out video game streaming on the platform.

In a 50-minute-long stream on Oct. 6, Musk streamed himself playing the popular online action role-playing game Diablo 4.

As things kicked off, Musk outlined that “what we are aiming for here is that the audio sounds normal, the image looks reasonably good so it's not flickering, and the comments are working.”

While the feature is still in its early stages of development, the quality of the stream remained consistent throughout, with Musk seemingly chuffed with the work the devs have put in so far.

“It's cool that it works at all,” he said.

Toward the end of the stream, Musk answered some questions from his viewers and provided more context on what X is aiming for.

“We will add in streaming for Xbox and PS5. You know we're not trying to do everything better than every other app, but we wanna say that ‘okay if you wanna do something within the X system or the X platform, you can do it if you want,” he said, adding:

“I think the very specialist apps are still gonna be probably better than us in a lot of ways but you know, I think we can be the best generalist app. There's some value to being a generalist app for I guess discovery, and for interacting with the largest number of people in the world.”

Musk, however, did not reveal anything about payments or crypto being integrated with streaming for aspects like subscriptions or donations etc.

Elon Musk explaining his Diablo character build. Source: X

There seems to be a significant amount of interest in the move.

At the time of writing, the stream or “broadcast” has had 2.8 million viewers in just a few hours since the session ended, while the tweet highlighting the stream has a whopping 9.3 million views and more than 5,300 retweets.

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Following the rebranding from Twitter to X in July, Musk explained that it was part of his plans to develop an “everything app” that essentially hosts a wide array of social media features and supports financial services, including crypto.

This focus has seen Twitter introduce the revenue share model for X Premium subscribers, among a host of other features, and to offer users the ability to post videos and content directly on the platform.

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Elon Musk to rebrand Twitter to X, but Crypto Twitter has other ideas

One pitch from Axie Infinity’s co-founder said to keep Twitter but have a crypto wallet named X for spending and creator tipping.

Twitter users, along with the avid crypto community, may soon see a very different version of the social media app — which is set to ditch its iconic blue bird logo for an “X” as part of a major rebrand.

Crypto Twitter hasn’t been particularly thrilled with some of the changes, however.

In a series of tweets on July 23, Musk hinted that the platform will be rebranded to “X” as early as Monday, an early step in its eventual transformation to an “everything app.”

The rebrand could involve changing Twitter’s color scheme to black, the removal of Twitter’s blue bird logo, and a name change to X, according to Musk’s various tweets and a poll.

The website used to access the social media platform may also change, with Musk confirming that X.com, the online address for his 1999-founded financial services start-up that sold to PayPal, now redirecting to Twitter.

According to the Wayback Machine, Prior to the change, x.com was a mostly blank website that simply displayed the letter "x." Prior to that, it had redirected to Musk's Boring Company website. The website URL also had a long stint in the early 2000s pointing to PayPal and even had a stint displaying eBay's corporate site. 

In March, Musk also established the tech firm X Corp. as Twitter’s parent company partly to realize his vision for the WeChat-like app.

Crypto Twitter calls rebrand decision ‘insane’

However, not many Crypto Twitter users have been thrilled with the proposed changes. Twitter has been a stronghold for the crypto community with over 1 billion tweets about crypto between 2020 and 2022 according to a March Hypebeast report.

Trust Machines marketing chief Dan Held said Twitter was “iconic,” adding Musk was “insane” to rebrand to X.

Others have been resistant to the proposed X rebrand. Crypto blogger Tiffany Fong said she’s “still callin it twitter” which podcast host Peter McCormack agreed with.

There were, however, some supportive of the idea saying the super-app has been Musk's vision since leaving PayPal and point to Musk's October tweet that implicitly said his Twitter purchase was the accelerant to creating X.

Others have been pitching their own ideas on how Musk should move ahead with X. Axie Infinity co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin said to keep the Twitter name but add a crypto wallet called X to allow users to spend and tip platform creators.

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Meanwhile, in a July 23 post, Twitter chief Linda Yaccarino added more clues about X, saying it would have “unlimited interactivity,” support multiple media formats, and feature payments and banking — a feature that Musk has reportedly said he wants to support crypto.

Without specifying how Yaccarino said the upcoming app would also be powered by artificial intelligence, though Musk has previously said AI would be used to detect manipulation of public opinion.

The rebrand comes as Musk admitted on July 15 that Twitter’s advertising revenue had dropped by 50% and the firm had a heavy debt load, although it’s unknown over what timeframe the revenue drop occurred.

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Elon Musk wants Twitter payments system built with crypto in mind

Twitter’s upcoming payments tool will initially support only fiat currencies, but Elon Musk wants it built to potentially support crypto in the future.

Twitter chief Elon Musk has reportedly instructed his developers to build the platform’s payments system in such a way that crypto functionality can be added in the future.

According to a Jan. 30 Financial Times report, two people familiar with Twitter’s plans said that the payments feature will support fiat currencies to start but be built to accommodate cryptocurrencies should the opportunity arise.

Twitter has long teased bringing payments to the social media platform — forming part of Musk’s stated plan to make Twitter an “everything app.”

However, it has remained vague as to whether these payments will involve blockchain or crypto technology, despite the Twitter CEO seeing a big role for crypto on Twitter.

In early December, images were leaked revealing “Twitter Coins” — a secret in-development digital asset to be used for payments and tipping on the platform, with many hopeful it would involve crypto in some way.

However, the more recently leaked images of the project in early January made no mention of crypto or blockchain technology, much to the dismay of the community.

Unconfirmed rumors also emerged last October that Twitter was working on a wallet prototype that would support crypto deposits and withdrawals.

However, it appears for the time being, the payments system will go ahead with only fiat support.

To that end, Twitter has begun the application process for state-based regulatory licenses across the United States that would allow it to introduce payments to the platform.

One of the sources said the company hopes the U.S. licensing process will be completed within a year.

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In November, “Twitter Payments LLC” registered with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which would allow it to process payments.

In a Twitter Space event around the same time, Musk said he envisioned allowing bank accounts to be connected to Twitter profiles and incorporating debit cards along with the platform being able to facilitate money transfers.

Following the future approval of the U.S. licenses, Twitter would eye gaining regulatory approvals internationally, according to one of the Financial Times’ sources.

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