Site iconSite icon ForkLog

X to Introduce ‘Smart Cashtags’ for Cryptocurrency and Stock Prices

ForkLog
X to Introduce 'Smart Tickers' for Cryptocurrency and Stock Prices

The team at X is developing a feature called Smart Cashtags, which will link cryptocurrency and stock tickers in posts to current market data, according to the platform’s head of product, Nikita Bier.

“X is the best source for financial news: hundreds of billions of dollars are invested based on what people read here,” he wrote.

Clicking on a “smart cashtag” will open a page with quotes, a price chart, and a feed of posts mentioning the asset. In some cases, tokens will be identified by the smart contract address.

The feature is scheduled to launch in February. According to Bier, the company is currently analyzing community feedback.

The executive also hinted at the possible introduction of trading. It is expected that transactions could be conducted through connected non-custodial wallets or widgets of centralized exchanges.

In June, former X head Linda Yaccarino announced the introduction of trading and investment tools in the app, but she left the company a month later.

Elon Musk has also repeatedly stated plans to transform the platform into a financial “super app,” not ruling out cryptocurrency integration.

At the end of 2023, the billionaire mentioned that the company expected to obtain licenses to launch a payment service by mid-2024, but at the time of writing, the service had not yet been launched.

Conflict

The announcement of Smart Cashtags came amid disputes that erupted in the community. The trigger was a now-deleted post by Bier, in which he criticized the behavior of X’s crypto segment participants.

He wrote that the digital asset-focused part of the social network “is killing itself.” The executive refuted the popular belief since autumn that a large number of replies under posts helps boost account visibility. Bier called this theory a myth.

“Every post consumes part of your daily audience reach. […] In the end, [crypto-X] spends all its reach on replies like ‘gm’ hundreds of times, and when it finally publishes something real, like a project announcement, only three people see it. [Crypto-X] is dying by suicide, not because of the algorithm,” he stated.

Users found the executive’s words contradictory, as the X team had previously encouraged active communication to increase reach.

Critics believe that Bier’s proposed “attention economy” concept undermines the platform’s foundations. In their view, the main value of the social network lies in user interaction.

“The very concept that active communication in comments can reduce the reach of your own posts and that ‘attention resources’ need to be ‘saved’ directly contradicts the basic principle of the platform as a social network,” commented a user under the pseudonym meta.

A similar opinion was expressed by an analyst under the nickname KALEO. He is convinced that limiting the frequency of replies contradicts the very essence of X. The prospect of such limits is already causing concern among users.

“Imagine if streamers were limited in how many times they could reply in their chat,” the expert drew an analogy.

Amid the conflict, crypto community members created a new meme — “Nikita Boar,” which Bier himself shared.

Decentralized exchanges have already been flooded with corresponding meme coins. At the time of writing, the largest of them, under the ticker BOAR, has a market capitalization exceeding $318 million.

Source: GeckoTerminal.

In November, X added a geolocation feature. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called it “risky.”

Exit mobile version