We tweaked our new Crypto Public Company Index this week, modifying the index inception price to $100.00 and the beginning date to match Coinbase’s direct Nasdaq listing of 4/14/2021. This day represents both the near-peak of the crypto markets and an auspicious milestone for increased legitimacy in public markets. Today, crypto is still down materially (73%) from the peak in 2021, but has increased by 132% year to date in 2023.
The most notable event in the public crypto-sphere this week may be the sudden and unanticipated rebranding of Twitter to X. The company is admittedly no longer public and not yet “crypto”, but the prevalence of Crypto Twitter, and the rebranded X’s aspirations to integrate Web3 components is quite relevant to our world. Musk’s “X” brand and his vision pre-date his involvement with PayPal, and the effort to integrate his comprehensive vision for X is reminiscent of a similar effort in the early days of the now legendary and ubiquitous web payments system to rebrand to X-PayPal. Recently appointed TwitterX CEO Linda Yaccarino seemed enthusiastic, “Tweeting” (can we still say that?) shortly after the announced re-brand that X will now transform the global town square into a global marketplace for ideas, service and opportunities. But what exactly this means leaves much room for speculation, which has been rampant and the reaction mixed.
The concept of a single “app to rule them all” may beg comparison to the likes of WeChat in China, which integrates messaging, shopping, banking and searching functions for its users. The potential for this model to resuscitate Twitter/X’s revenues is an exciting prospect, that faces many hurdles. This includes the simple matter of trust – will users be willing to park their complete digital lives including finances with the ubiquitous but stumbling message platform now known as X? WeChat’s 1.2B Chinese users may not have much choice, but the rest of the world has numerous competing alternatives that include web3 payments with increased functionality as well competing messaging platform such as Meta’s Threads.
Mr. Musk combines a habit of boldly ambitious vision with a history of making big things happen. Can he and Ms. Yaccarino do it again with X? Will the Crypto Twitter community stick around for the ride? Time will tell.
