Elon Musk predicts X will replace banks in 2024

Alex Heath at the Verge, with yet another internal meeting leak:

Elon Musk wants X to be the center of your financial world, handling anything in your life that deals with money. He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, he told X employees during an all hands call on Thursday, saying that people will be surprised with “just how powerful it is.”

“When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Verge. “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.”

This will almost surely be underwritten by a real bank, like Apple Card and Savings accounts are handled by Goldman Sachs, as Musk lacks the discipline to clear the regulatory hurdles to become the actual center of one’s financial life. But if this launches, I fully expect Musk will mandate his employees use this account for direct deposit for their paychecks and may even go further, requiring it of Tesla and SpaceX employees as well.

But the thing I can’t stop imagining is that he might promise social boosting for his mostly red-pilled, socially-disaffected male acolytes who park their money in X’s coffers. Maybe they’ll get a special checkmark or even more prominent placement in people’s timelines and replies.

Hard to see how this doesn’t end in some kind of cross between It’s a Wonderful Life and The Purge when tens of thousands of incredibly online, gun-toting libertarian men realize their life savings have been eradicated following a bank run caused by, surely, some stupid thing Elon will have tweeted.