Twitter owner Elon Musk recently announced the rebranding of Twitter’s bird logo to an “X,” with the aim to create X as a global marketplace centered around audio, video, messaging, payments/banking, and more. The domain X dot com now redirects users to Twitter dot com. Musk mentioned that the new X logo will go live later today.
But how many of you know that Twitter’s potential new logo takes Elon Musk back to his tech entrepreneur days when he was a 28-year-old, with aspirations to launch an online banking company in 1999
According to a popular author Walter Isaacson, the infatuation of Elon Musk with the name X.com goes way back. His experience at Scotiabank had convinced him that the industry was ripe for disruption. So in March 1999, he founded X.com.
The infatuation of @elonmusk with the name https://t.co/CZLJi8uLXZ goes way back. Here are some excerpts from my upcoming book, https://t.co/7JGHd10lOC“When his cousin Peter Rive visited in early 1999, he found Musk poring over books about the banking system. “I’m trying to… https://t.co/2PQr0qQhVG pic.twitter.com/WDdACBZTmc— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) July 23, 2023
“His concept for X.com was grand. It would be a one-stop everything-store for all financial needs: banking, digital purchases, checking, credit cards, investments, and loans. Transactions would be handled instantly, with no waiting for payments to clear. His insight was that money is simply an entry into a database, and he wanted to devise a way that all transactions were securely recorded in real time,” Isaacson wrote on Twitter.
According to the author, Musk was able to entice the influential head of Sequoia Capital, Michael Moritz, to make a major investment in X.com. Moritz then facilitated a deal with Barclay’s Bank and a community bank in Colorado to become partners, so that X.com could offer mutual funds, have a bank charter, and be FDIC-insured.
Musk wanted the company to be named X.com, with PayPal as one of its subsidiaries. He even attempted to rename the payment system X-PayPal, but there was resistance since PayPal was already a trusted brand. Later, conflicts arose between Max Levchin and Musk over the choice of the main operating system, Microsoft Windows or Unix.
Reports suggested that disagreements over the name X.com led to Musk’s departure from PayPal in late 2000. Most employees favoured the name PayPal, and in 2001, the company was rebranded accordingly.
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