X’s Nikita Bier says as X Money release nears

Nikita Bier may have told crypto what X is about to send.

“Crypto has had a tough year. Maybe we should release something to fix it,” X’s product manager wrote Tuesday in a post that garnered more than 677,000 views in a matter of hours.

Elon Musk confirmed last month that

What’s under that pile remains an open question.

The public details describe a fiat-based product, with no confirmed crypto functionality. But

Three weeks ago, X hired Benji Taylor, former product manager at Aave and design director at Base.

Bier said at the time of the hire that he had followed Taylor’s work for years and had lobbied to bring him on board, calling one of his previous products among the best designed he had seen.

But whether that overlap turns into competition or integration remains unresolved.

X could keep its payments stack entirely fiat, competing with cryptocurrencies for users seeking performance and convenience. Or you could eventually incorporate crypto rails behind the scenes, using the blockchain infrastructure without exposing users directly to it.

For now, Bier’s post falls into that ambiguity. Cryptocurrencies may be waiting for their next catalyst, but it is no longer clear whether that catalyst will come from the industry or the platforms being built around it.