Elon Musk will not lead Twitter

Elon Musk will not lead Twitter. How this will affect cryptocurrencies
Elon Musk will be able to focus on integrating cryptocurrency payments after he resigns as Twitter's head
The billionaire will take over as chief technology officer, focusing among other things on integrating payments into the social network

Elon Musk will leave the post of CEO of Twitter. He announced it in his account on the social network. He has served as Twitter's CEO since acquiring the social network for $44 billion in 2022.

That "madman" eventually became Linda Yaccarino, head of advertising at NBCUniversal, which owns a network of TV channels and several movie studios. Musk specified that she would start working "in about half a month

"New Stuff."
"Now we can take a break and focus on new stuff," Floki Inu (FLOKI), the chief developer of the cryptocurrency under the pseudonym B Da Viking, wrote in a comment on Musk's tweet. FLOKI is a popular memcoin named after Musk's dog, which is one of the top 100 largest crypto-assets with a capitalization of more than $300 million.

The "new stuff" probably refers to the integration of payments, including cryptocurrencies, into the social network's interface, as Musk himself has said more than once. At the end of January, sources told the Financial Times that Twitter was already developing an embedded payment system and had begun to apply for the necessary licenses in the United States. The social network's payment system will be fiat but built in such a way as to integrate cryptocurrencies into it later.

Judging by the history of Musk's statements, he really doesn't give up hope of integrating cryptocurrencies into the social network interface. If we take into account his previous global goals to develop a "super app" X (similar to China's WeChat), we can assume the creation of some ecosystem with internal support for cryptocurrencies, part of which would be Twitter, notes Nikita Zuborev, senior analyst at aggregator BestChange.ru.

"But if we consider Twitter separately, at the initial stage Musk could introduce a function of sending money through personal messages, payment for subscriptions to paid content or Twitter Blue status for cryptocurrency. Any coins might be suitable for these purposes, so Bitcoin and Dogecoin (DOGE) could potentially benefit from such integration," the analyst says.

The implementation of a payment function in Twitter is one of Musk's key objectives, co-founder of ENCRY Foundation Roman Nekrasov considers. In his opinion, it will make the social network a "more predictable and stable source of income," as well as add a feature that is not available in other social networks, which will attract new users and make the social network a more profitable asset in the portfolio of Musk.

Technically, the integration of crypto payments into Twitter could be implemented in partnership with a third-party crypto company, Nekrasov said, such as Coinbase, which already has a developed infrastructure - wallets, an exchange, business solutions, and payment gateways.

"Another option is for Musk to acquire a payment gateway operator," the expert suggests. - In any case, the main task is not just to introduce cryptocurrencies, but to allow those who do not have them to conveniently buy cryptocurrencies and just as conveniently spend them within the social network."

Despite Musk's plans, the likelihood of introducing cryptocurrencies is still questionable because of the "witch hunt" by U.S. regulators, which has already provoked the departure of many large crypto companies in other jurisdictions, Zuborev adds. Perhaps one of the tasks of the new CEO will be to find a way to find legal loopholes for the safe implementation of cryptocurrencies in the social network, "but this is only our speculation."

The impact on prices
As head of Twitter, Musk has seamlessly joined the cryptocurrency community, which has settled on the platform since the nascent stage of the crypto business. Musk participates in Twitter Spaces broadcasts with opinion leaders from the crypto sphere and comments on high-profile news on his personal account.

Often Musk's tweets cause significant spikes in the price of crypto-assets mentioned directly or indirectly by him. The most popular of these is Dogecoin (DOGE). In his May 2021 tweet, Musk said that he was working with the developers of Dogecoin to improve the efficiency of the system, which immediately led to a 22% increase in the Dogecoin exchange rate.

In December of that year, DOGE jumped 33% when Musk announced that electric car maker Tesla would begin accepting the coin as payment for goods at its online store. Typically, such price spikes are fleeting, as traders and automated bots begin buying up tokens mentioned by Musk within seconds of his Twitter comments, only to quickly sell them at a profit afterward.

On Thursday, May 10, Musk posted a meme on Twitter with an image of NFT from the Milady collection. The collection includes 10,000 images and was created in 2021 by Remilia, a collective of digital artists. Shortly after Musk's tweet, it hit the top of the trading platform OpenSea - prices for one NFT at the peak reached $13.7 thousand in the cryptocurrency ETH. The daily trading volume of Milady images on OpenSea exceeded $22 million, a tenfold increase compared to last week.

Musk gained a reputation as an influencer in the cryptocurrency community long before he bought Twitter, Nekrasov explains. The change of position, in his opinion, will not have a negative impact on this reputation. Rather, we can expect a positive impact because the position of tech director "corresponds more to Musk's role as an eccentric innovator."

The head of Tesla influenced cryptocurrency rates through Twitter while he was not connected to the social network in any way, so a purely technical change in the position will not affect the weight of his statements, Zuborev agrees. If a sensible and effective manager will be at the head of the social network, he will be able to normalize the work of all services and take it away from the associations with Musk's manipulation of the prices of cryptocurrencies, the analyst believes. Twitter will only benefit from this, and its significance can only increase with the best of circumstances.

Elon Musk will not lead Twitter. How this will affect cryptocurrencies

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