How Elon Musk could put more crypto into Twitter

California: After months of dramatic back-and-forth, Elon Musk has taken control of Twitter Inc., igniting emotions ranging from hope to anxiety among users who are bracing themselves for how the billionaire will put his stamp on the social-media platform. Crypto Twitter is no exception.

Digital-asset enthusiasts have long congregated on Twitter, where they’ve changed their profile pictures to images of themselves with “laser eyes” as a signal of their crypto support, posted irreverent memes about rising (and then falling) coin prices and re-tweeted threads from their favorite founders.

Musk, a prolific tweeter himself, has had a complicated relationship with crypto, seeming to embrace it one minute and belittle it the next. That hasn’t stopped industry supporters from imagining an expansion of Twitter’s blockchain features under his management that would broaden mainstream adoption. Their elation has likely helped boost interest in Dogecoin, Musk’s token of choice, which has soared days leading up to his finally sealing the deal.

Twitter has made its own forays into crypto. Co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey is one of the industry’s most well-known Bitcoin bulls, and under his leadership, the company introduced a feature to let users receive tips in Bitcoin, built a Twitter Crypto division and started Bluesky, a project dedicated to building a decentralized social media network that is now an independent company. Since Dorsey’s departure last November, Twitter has added Ether tipping, nonfungible token profile pictures and USD Coin stablecoin payments for a select group of creators.

It’s unclear what will happen to these efforts under the leadership of Musk, who’s been notoriously mercurial about crypto and may clean out the platform’s digital-asset team as other high-profile executives exit. While the Tesla Inc. CEO has touted Dogecoin on Twitter enough to earn the moniker “the Dogefather,” he called the token “a hustle” when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in May 2021. He also added the ability to pay in Bitcoin for Tesla’s electric vehicles in 2021, but ended the practice less than two months later, citing the cryptocurrency’s environmental impact.

In putting together the Twitter acquisition, Musk has seemed to waver on his commitment to crypto. Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest digital-asset exchange, committed $500 million to Musk’s financing for the deal in May and is reportedly building a team focused on exploring how crypto could be useful to the social media company. In a trove of text messages released as part of litigation over the Twitter deal, Musk initially discussed using blockchain to promote free speech and reduce spam on social media, only to write later that “blockchain Twitter isn’t possible.”

While integrating these blockchain elements would be a complex and closely watched undertaking for Twitter, Musk’s new reign still opens up the potential for them to become a reality.