The Newest Crypto Entrant—Elon

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is at it again…

This time, she’s telling one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our generation that he’s inept and unqualified to innovate in a field.

Earlier this week, the Massachusetts senator penned an open letter to Elon Musk. She had some “serious questions” about a rumored new feature for X.

On the surface it seems like a ploy to call out a successful billionaire for not paying their fair share in taxes. That’s Warren’s typical playbook…

But the truth is much more revealing.

Elon Musk is threatening the very industry that Sen. Warren protects.

As I shared on Wednesday, it’s an industry that needs to adapt or die.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s start at the beginning…

Cashtags

A few days ago, X’s Head of Product, Nikita Bier, revealed Cashtags. It’s a solution that brings real-time financial data to X. Users simply put a dollar sign next to a ticker (i.e., $TSLA) and a reader can see real-time price charts by clicking the cashtag.

Alongside the chart are popular and recent posts related to the ticker, giving the financial tool a social experience you’d expect with X.

It’s an elegant product, one that users have been asking for since the Twitter days. The feature is useful on its own, but X didn’t stop with just displaying data…

The rollout came with news that X is involved with Canadian brokerage firm Wealthsimple to create a trading experience. Wealthsimple is Canada’s largest online brokerage and fintech platform for stocks, ETFs, and regulated crypto trading.

And through this partnership, users will be able to click the ‘trade’ button under a chart and execute a buy or sell order.

It’s not a full in-app execution solution just yet. But digging deeper, we can see where things are going…

Another April Release Coming

The social media app is getting ready to roll out X Money later this month. It’s envisioned to be a digital payments system embedded right in the app. The plan appears to start with fiat and as we’ll see in a moment, perhaps move on to other assets like Bitcoin, Ether, stablecoins, etc., over time. That means the Cashtag announcement was likely just an appetizer for what’s to come.

And that’s where Liz—who never saw an innovation she didn’t want to regulate—comes back into the story.

Earlier this week, she sent a letter to Elon Musk asking for details related to the new product.

She didn’t mince words. From the letter:

If your track record operating X is any indication of how you’ll operate X Money, consumers, our national security, and the stability of the financial system may be at risk.

[…]

Your failure to operate X in a safe and responsible manner does not breed confidence in your ability to safely expand into consumer finance.

The comments are hyperbolic…and unhinged.

But to understand Warren’s angle, we need to go back to February 2025. That’s when Congress held a hearing titled Operation Chokepoint 2.0 (OCP 2.0).

Jeff has covered this issue before in A Competitor for Gold. OCP 2.0 was a coordinated attempt to keep the digital asset industry out of banking. Said differently, it was a debanking operation under the Biden administration.

Many in the crypto industry were afraid to speak up when OCP 2.0 was happening. They were afraid of being debanked themselves.

But make no mistake, OCP 2.0 was egregious. It was enough to warrant congressional hearings, new legislation, and changes at various federal regulatory agencies within months of the new administration taking the oath of office.

But to really drive home the connection between OCP 2.0 and Sen. Warren, consider this…

During a congressional hearing, Rep. Davidson said, “Warren kind of wants to take credit for it. Gary Gensler met with her often. Lael Brainard from the FDIC, or the Federal Reserve System kind of went into the administration and they seemed to be coordinated in the effort to shut down the [crypto] industry.”

Yes, that’s the same SEC Chairman Gary “regulation by enforcement” Gensler we spoke about on Wednesday.

Warren was behind much of the aggression towards the industry in prior years. That’s not speculation. The senator would tell you as much.

Source: Warren for Senate (2023 Campaign)

That’s the backstory. And it’s important context for her new fight with Musk’s X Money.

But here’s the thing—Warren will lose.

And that’s because X and Musk are putting serious talent behind the rollout of this product.

The Best Possible Hire

X hired Benji Taylor just a few weeks ago.

You’ve probably never heard that name. But Taylor is literally the biggest name in blockchain-based wallet development.

Here are some highlights over the last few years.

• Founded Los Feliz Engineering, the studio behind the self-custody wallet Family
• Joined Aave Labs as Chief Product Officer where he oversaw product strategy for wallet-related features. This was after Aave acquired his firm in 2023.
• Was Head of Design at Coinbase’s Base (layer-two Ethereum network) where his team created the Base app, an app that went beyond being just a standalone wallet.

In the industry, he’s a heavy hitter. And Taylor is now Head of Design at X. And with him in place, we can get an idea of what to expect from X Money.

We don’t know if Taylor is building a blockchain wallet function in the app. But given his background, it’s not far-fetched to imagine a super-app that blurs the lines between traditional banking and onchain solutions.

Another clue is X Money’s core banking partner. It’s none other than Cross River Bank. This isn’t your typical bank. It’s more of a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) setup. They provide the rails and neobanks or payment apps provide the customer-facing solution.

Cross River handles compliance, KYC/AML, account creation and licensing.

Importantly, Cross River Bank has been actively involved in crypto as far back as 2014 through its integration with Ripple’s cross-border payment protocol.

More recently, they launched a unified fiat and stablecoin payments platform in 2025 — a solution that handles transactions across various blockchains, compliance, and settlement.

They’ve even built solutions related to blockchains such as card settlements of USDC on Solana, fiat settlements via Bitcoin network, and crypto-linked cards.

Importantly, the bank does not offer direct crypto custody or trading. That implies that custodial solutions would need to either come from Wealthsimple or via a new solution. That could be something Benji Taylor might be good at.

Bottom line: X Money looks to be creating its own self-custody solution.

And if that’s the case, everything starts to click.

The Super-app

X Money is intended to be the native payment layer for X. It will enable peer-to-peer transfers, bank deposits and withdrawals, debit cards, and yield-bearing accounts.

When we combine this with Cashtags’ most recent work in trading, it’s clear X is about to become a super-app that handles payments, banking, and trading. A solution that will blur the lines between traditional banking and public blockchains.

That’s also why Warren hates it.

X is about to out-innovate the legacy finance system. It’s the very industry Warren has been fighting tooth and nail to prevent crypto from entering.

But increasingly, she’s a lonely voice.

Last July, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins touched on this “super-app” when asked what he means by it:

Plain and simple: securities intermediaries should be able to offer a broad range of products and services under one roof with a single license. A broker-dealer with an alternative trading system should be able to offer trading in non-security crypto assets alongside crypto asset securities, traditional securities, and other services, like crypto asset staking and lending, without requiring fifty-plus state licenses or multiple federal licenses.

Elon is likely to win… Again.

This is a big reason the tokenization trend is heating up. The race to bring stocks, ETFs, commodities, and other assets online is becoming a race with the world’s biggest players.

X is now tossing its hat in the ring.

This is only getting started…

Your Pulse on Crypto,

Ben Lilly
Editor, Chain of Thought