With US$1 billion in annual debt repayments, Twitter can’t afford to become a stock trading platform

Elon Musk apparently meant it when expressed a desire to transform Twitter — or X — into an ‘everything app’. According to allegedly leaked documents, stock trading is on the cards for the platform… if they can find someone to help build it for free.

Semafor says it has gotten its hands on leaked documents that reveal that X Corp is looking for a financial data company to help build a trading arm directly into the app.

These were recently sent to large service providers over the last few weeks, asking them to send proposals on how they would implement fintech content, real-time stock data and more into the app.

“Real-time information is a powerful force, especially in the world of investing,” the documents pitched.

“Twitter’s real-time, public platform has become the heartbeat of the financial community.”

According to the alleged documents, the proposals were due last week.

But despite reports, Musk is denying that this is actually happening.

“No work is being done on this to the best of my knowledge,” he wrote.

No work is being done on this to the best of my knowledge

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2023

Despite the denials, this isn’t the first time that Twitter has been involved with stock market offerings since Musk took the reigns,

Earlier this year it introduced an extension to the cashtag feature (which originally launched in 2012) where users could click on a ‘tag’ that utilised a dollar sign rather than a hash. This allowed them to see a live stock chart. This was implemented with the help of a data startup called TradingView.

There were also plans for a one-click referral option for buying and selling stocks via eToro to be introduced in April but it is yet to happen.

X Corp doesn’t have the cash to transform Twitter

Perhaps the most interesting part of the report was that they were asking potential providers not only to work for exposure to “hundreds of millions of highly-qualified users”, but to pitch how much of their own cash they could contribute to the project.

And this isn’t surprising.

As we said in our analysis of the X rebranding — the company can’t afford to become an ‘everything app’. It can’t even afford what it’s doing right now.

To become a WeChat competitor — or even just add a trading arm — takes resources and money. With a US$1 billion annual debt repayment thanks to the acquisition and 7500 fewer employees since Musk took over —  X Corp has neither.

And let’s not forget that Musk admitted in July that the platform had seen a 50% drop in advertising revenue,

“Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” Musk said in July.

Are we really letting Musk near stocks again?

Musk has certainly become the main character of the big tech world over recent years, often for incredibly embarrassing reasons.

So it is understandable to forget some of the weird and straight-up illegal things he’s done.

But one of the big ones we really need to remember here is the ‘420’ debacle of 2018 where he tweeted about taking Tesla private. This resulted in a US$20 million fine to the SEC and having to step down as chairman of Tesla.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

But it didn’t stop there, with Musk continuing to tweet about Tesla, resulting in spikes in stock prices, risking being in contempt of court.

Market manipulation, even for the memes, is of course illegal. But Musk managed to mostly find a way around this when it came to the cryptocurrency market. Tweets about buying, or dumping Bitcoin had a massive influence on its pricing thanks to the unregulated nature of the cryptocurrency industry.

He also had a large part to play in the popularity of memes stocks several years back, particularly in tweeting incessantly about Dogecoin. At one point this resulted in the coin jumping by 500% and hitting a market cap of $US6.63 billion within a one-month period.

Threats of SEC investigations have never been a deterrent for Musk, who revels in shitposting for the attention of his paid-blue-tick devotees. And one point he even filed documents with the SEC that stated that “Technoking’ is being added to Musk’s list of titles as CEO of Tesla. Similarly, Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn had ‘Master of the Coin’ added to his title.

Considering Musk’s history with the financial sector has been akin to a metaphorical middle finger, one has to ask how anyone could consider helping this guy have even more influence over it.

Hopefully, at least in the case of Twitter, he simply won’t be able to afford to.