this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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“If it involves money. It’ll be on our platform. Money or securities or whatever. So, it’s not just like send $20 to my friend. I’m talking about, like, you won’t need a bank account.”

Well that sounds terrifying!

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[–] Humanius 425 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (35 children)

Just wait till Musk learns about banking regulations.
He's already complaining about the EU regulations on social media, but they nothing compared to what banks have to deal with.

[–] [email protected] 134 points 1 year ago (9 children)

He’s recreating Venmo. 😂

[–] PumpkinEscobar 96 points 1 year ago (7 children)

FWIW his white whale or inspiration is more like the Chinese “we do everything” apps / platforms https://wise.com/us/blog/chinese-payment-app

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Without getting official government institutions on board or making the app mandatory in some way, I don't see how this would work outside of authoritarian countries

They're bleeding users and advertisers as it is

[–] cyd 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The Chinese super apps didn't really have government institutions on board, aside from the chat censorship aspect which was the main thing the government was originally paying attention to. In other aspects, the Chinese government and its regulators didn't initially get involved, and the rapid dominance of Alibaba and Tencent took them by surprise.

The super apps benefitted from a mix of rapid smartphone adoption, first mover advantages, weak consumer protections, and fierce competition with each other. It's probably that combination of circumstances that's hard to replicate, not the authoritarian country bit (there are lots of authoritarian countries that haven't fostered super apps).

The Chinese government was not entirely happy about the result; for example, the dominance of WeChat Pay and AliPay poses a threat to the state-owned banks, which are a major channel of government control over the economy. That is why the Chinese government has spent the last few years cracking down on the super app companies in various ways.

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[–] dojan 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

The thing about these everything apps is that they filled a niche in the markets they've succeeded in. As far as I know, and I could be wrong, Google doesn't operate their Play services or Google Pay in China, meaning there was a vacuum for something else to fill it. WeChat and AliPay has done that.

It'd take a LOT of effort to build a platform like Paytm for the U.S., nevermind other markets. You can't just buy a microblogging platform and magically redevelop it into something like Paytm. He'd need to partner with other businesses and whatnot, and I just don't see there being any sort of interest in that kind of partnership.

There's been attempts to build these sorts of "everything apps" before. Facebook has tried and failed. I think Snapchat has tried it. Apps here in the west tend to focus on doing a single or a handful of tasks really well. If an app ends up doing too much, it's often split into several apps.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago

This will almost definitely have a large "crypto" aspect. Which means the business model starts at unregulated fraud and gets worse from there.

But yeah, I assume there is a whiteboard at twitter headquarters, smeared with feces, that has

  1. Become bank
  2. ...
  3. Too big to fail
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[–] SinningStromgald 167 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'd rather let a crack addict manage my money than let Musky any near it.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’d rather let a crack addict manage my balls than let Musk anywhere near my money.

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[–] tabular 140 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

Is it possible to remain subscribed to Technology but not get posts about this person?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago

Remember when the reddit technology sub banned articles about tesla? Good times.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

Depending on your client you can likely filter or block specific users and phrases.

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[–] SCB 110 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

There are going to be a lot of people saying how stupid this entire concept is in the comments.

Let me tell you something, as a person who spent years in finance. There's no fucking chance on Earth this happens. You will win the Powerball twice consecutively before Musk pulls this off.

None of this infrastructure exists in X and all of this infrastructure is exactly the kind of shit Musk hates. Automobile regulations are fucking nothing compared to financial regs.

Adoption aside, which you'd have to be fucking insane to adopt this platform as a payments platform, the regs alone will ensure this never, ever, materializes.

What Musk describes will someday exist. He will not be involved, and the day is well over a decade away.

This is "Kanye West running for President" level of stupidity. The people close to him have let him down by not telling him how stupid this is.

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[–] hogunner 75 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (13 children)

“Money or securities or whatever.”

Spoken like a true genius. /s

Keep burning your money, Elon; I can’t wait until you’re poor enough that no one gives a fuck what your latest horrible hot take or idea was. You won’t be missed.

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[–] Furbag 67 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh boy, if Elon Musk has trouble dealing with regulators and oversight agencies when managing his car company or his social media company, imagine what a wakeup call it's going to be when he wants to start dealing with banking regulators. 0% chance he doesn't run afoul of them in the first year trying to run his business by the seat of his pants like he does with all the others.

Yet another half-baked idea to spill out of the mouth of this fucking moron with too much money for his own good.

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[–] sanqueue 63 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You won't need a bank account because all your money will be stored in my account 🤣

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[–] set_secret 61 points 1 year ago

it will blow my mind if Twitter even still exists by then.

[–] michaelmrose 59 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Prediction: He's going to try to pay his employees in Xits: Your going to negotiate a salary based on a floating exchange rate with a new cryptocurrency and then when it starts to tank he will refuse to renegotiate based on the fact that its headed for the moon!

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago

All the evidence suggests he can't be trusted with his money, let alone my money.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (6 children)

My girlfriend has a theory that he's trying to destroy the platform deliberately. I disagreed with her until he renamed it to X lol

[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Just today there was a great comment by @[email protected] on why this does not make any sense.

  1. When you factor in the incredible damage done to the Tesla share price by the amount of stock he had to liquidate to finance the deal, and the almost billion a year in interest and operating costs the company is pulling out of him, the deal has, altogether, cost Musk about half of his net worth. No amount of petty childishness is worth that.
  1. He literally went to court to try to get out of the deal. What was his play here? To sue with the intention of failing? For what possible reason?
  2. If his plan was to kill Twitter, why would he attach his beloved X name to it? Musk has spent his entire life trying to make X happen. It is dearer to him than his own children. Why would he attach that brand to a company he’s intentionally sabotaging?
  3. If his goal is to kill Twitter, why is it still here? He owns the company outright. He took it private. There’s no board. There’s no shareholders. He doesn’t have a fiduciary responsibility. If he wanted Twitter dead, all he had to do was shut the doors, turn off the lights, and send everyone home.

Anyone who buys into this “He’s trying to kill Twitter” nonsense, please, I am begging you, try to get your head around the fact that Elon Musk is not a smart man. This isn’t some incredible 4D chess play. Twitter isn’t failing because of intentional sabotage; it’s failing because Musk is genuinely trying his best, and his best absolutely sucks. He’s a bad businessman who lucked into a fortune he never deserved.

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/4855307

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[–] SloppyPuppy 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

As someone who worked for a tech banking company many years, you are too stupid to do it.

This shit is complicated as fuck.

Oh and all the tech in the world or capital you could build is worthless unless you have that sweet banking / credit license in US. And lets just say its really really hard to cone by nowadays.

[–] anon_8675309 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Oh please. It ain't complicated. I could write a ruby app in a weekend that would do everything a bank does. It's just subtracting from one account and adding to another.

  • Elon Musk probably.
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[–] eran_morad 54 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I am so sick of hearing about this cunt.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Buy a social media company because you know there's no way you'll ever make one naturally

Claim that it's too full of bots and try to walk out, despite having already signed the deal

Treat your new employees almost like slaves because apparently sleeping at the office is a reasonable proposition

Rebrand the social media network for no good reason, tanking value

Drive advertisers away by changing the algorithm that helped make site so good

Lose millions in company net worth and become an internet laughing stock

...Have the bright idea to save the company by also making it a...... banking provider....

?!

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

His first garbage idea. He's super nostalgic for X the platform her merged with PayPal to become super wealthy especially after the people that knew what they were doing had to pay him to leave.

Literally the same concept, name and everything. It's like he thinks he can just start over at the first app and it just will be propped up by a corpse. Idiot.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dumb idiot who constantly is wrong in predictions says more stupid shit, news at 11.

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[–] BeautifulMind 51 points 1 year ago

It's the return of company scrip.

The most-garbage/toxic notion of tech platforms these days is when they masquerade as tech platforms but are really unregulated banking platforms.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'll just go on the record right now and say I'm never using XitPay or whatever he decides to call it.

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[–] systemglitch 46 points 1 year ago (10 children)

It's strange, because I wouldn't, not even for a moment, ever in my life consider this.if I feel this way, so does a large chunk of the population.

So its already failed imo.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (6 children)

At this point I'm surprised that "X" has employees.

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[–] art 41 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Every time that dude gives another "vision of the future" it just sounds worse and worse.

I don't want another commercial bank but on the internet. I want more non-profits. I don't want self-driving cars. I want better public transportation.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lets put all our money on a platform rushed in under a year made from an exhausted and abused team of engineers. That sounds like a great idea. Definitely will be well thought out and reliable.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Tesla stock, nfts, x/ai subscription... He just keep ripping off dumb fanboys and it keeps working

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[–] DocMcStuffin 38 points 1 year ago

Musk must have a fetish for having government regulators up his ass. The FTC is already up there to where he screams like a pig. Now add banking-but-not-a-bank and they're going to be up there even further.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is exactly what he envisionied "X.com" to be back in like 1999... jesus christ, doods having a midlife crisis.

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[–] raynethackery 34 points 1 year ago

I like my credit union.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

I'm gonna trust the guy who got rid of his CSAM team with my money.

I'm gonna trust the guy who pimped Dogecoin with my money.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (7 children)

There are plenty of online banks that do all the stuff people want. So good luck with that. And enjoy all the hideously complex finance regulation & legal obligations that varies from one location to another.

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[–] notannpc 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Ignoring the Elon factor….it will still be a bank account. It will just be a bank account that can only be managed through twitter.

Thats not a better banking experience.

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[–] aesthelete 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It continues to blow my mind that anyone cares what this fucking gasbag has to say about anything.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Cool story Elon. Hey, where's that full self driving you promised would be ready next year 5 years ago?

[–] scarabic 31 points 1 year ago (6 children)

It’s hilarious how Musk gives his staff ultimatums. The fact is they can get other jobs. It’s Musk who is deeply invested in Twitter now and can’t just cut his strings so easily. Why is he the one batting them around and threatening them all the time? What the hell kind of gluttons for punishment are still working there?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The fact is they can get other jobs.

I'm guessing many of his US staff are stuck at Twitter due to the visa rules. They're basically very well-paid slaves, and he knows it.

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