Hahahahahahahaha.
Is he trying to morph a social media company into the financial services company he didn’t get to build in 1999 because the board threw him out?
Yes, did you read the article? He says exactly that.
Good luck to Mr. Musk, the bank ain’t gonna give up my money without a fight.
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Elon Musk wants X to be the center of your financial world, handling anything in your life that deals with money.
He expects those features to launch by the end of 2024, he told X employees during an all-hands call on Thursday, saying that people will be surprised with “just how powerful it is.”
“When I say payments, I actually mean someone’s entire financial life,” Musk said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Verge.
The company is currently working on locking down money transmission licenses across the US so that it can offer financial services.
“The X/PayPal product roadmap was written by myself and David Sacks actually in July of 2000,” Musk said on Thursday’s internal X call.
“And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy.
Saved 62% of original text.
Warning: US-centric semi-relevant rant inbound
As a hardcore online banker: I don’t want another fucking bank. I want the actual problem that is the slow-ass ACH network (looking at you NACHA) to be solved. Online banking was as perfect as it was going to get under Simple until they sold out.
While I’m on a rant: fuck companies that sell out. Fucking tired of amazing companies kicking ass in their field selling out. That goes for Simple → BBVA, ONE Finance → Walmart, Truebill → Rocket.
Shit man. I’m a programmer and I just want to write my own bank at this point, but that won’t happen because I’m not a multimillionaire.
Seriously I asked ChatGPT how to solve this shit and it just said “use personal finance apps” but okay? They all suck. Whose dick I gotta suck for instant ACH (remember Dwolla?), multiple checking accounts and an automated “money manager?” And don’t give me “pOCkeTs.”
Simple selling to BBVA was shit. Simple was never my main bank, but it was a nice, simple service. That was free. Then they moved to BBVA, which almost immediately got bought up by PNC, and then PNC started charging monthly fees. Closed my account before the first fees hit.
I still have a Varo account. Surprised that hasn’t gotten vacuumed up yet by one of the traditional banks.
Isn’t that what FedNow is?
It’s been a hot minute but IIRC it’s “next day” or “same day” but opt-in on the bank’s side. And of course a bank will never tell you flat out what they use.
I might be petty on this topic. Many times in my life I’ve been screwed due to slow/unpredictable transfers and I go into a research frenzy but I quickly forget the results of said frenzy.
I’m also comparing this to like, what other countries have. Recently I discovered that in the Philippines you can instantly move funds between two debit cards simply by using the card details. It’s like the Visa/Mastercard proprietary P2P stuff (think Cash App) but at the bank level (ACH).
Canada has had e-transfer for ages. You can securely transfer cash to anyone in the country using their email address or phone number. If you have auto-deposit enabled it’s instant, too.
Oh, and it’s free. It only costs money if you use the e-transfer system to request money from someone (for obvious reasons.) And even then, it’s only like $1ish.
The US not having a system like that is frankly ridiculous.
Hard agree. I always hear about how easy it is in other countries and get so jealous.
Ugh, I miss Simple so much. I was alright with ONE until they stripped the virtual card function from pockets… What is the actual point of Pockets now if I have to transfer the money directly back to my main checking area??
I ditched ONE pretty quickly after they sold out. A few times I’ve logged in just to see what’s up and the UI sure went to hell. I always knew it was just a wrapped React app but now it’s like they’re not even trying. The Walmart color scheme was a hasty change that seems to break a lot too.
I wish they’d support Webauthn or 2FA with the QR rather than the 2012-era SMS/email code. Why would I want SMS/email OTP codes for a bank? Seriously guys you’re like 10+ years too late but I guess a lot of other websites think this is “modern” too lately. 🙄
Have you found any other decent online-centric banks to switch to? I’ve been wanting to switch away from ONE for pretty much the reasons you listed, but through a basic search I didn’t see anything else to was too appealing to me.
And the 2FA thing is ridiculous, at one point they didn’t actually have the email option (or it was very well hidden) - had a bit of a rough month at some point and wasn’t able to pay my phone bill which got it suspended, I also happened to have my card locked and got kicked out of the app so… I couldn’t unblock my card to pay the phone bill, which I needed to get the 2FA code to login in… Ended up having to reach out to support and they were able to show me how to request a 2FA code over email.
This wouldn’t even be a problem with most sites because I always use TOTP/Webauthn via my Yubikey when I have the option, and for something as critical as my bank account I really do not want SMS/Email to be an option for 2FA (I get why they have it, but I’d like to be able to turn it off for my account).
Not really. I love Betterment to death but they’re more geared toward investing (which is fine). I do know they use nbkc and have only heard good things about them; maybe give them a shot?
Interesting, I will have a look at them - thanks!
You’ve described a big part of why I hate startup culture. “Let’s build cool thing then sell it to a huge company and get rich.” I’m never doing it again, such a waste of time and energy.
Oh hell no. I’ve seen how he manages his money. Like fuck I’m letting him anywhere near mine.
No thank you. I’ll keep my bank.
He’s never going to get this past the regulators. Financial break points and buffers make sense, every financial crisis and crisis of stability has taught us that. If you continue to build too big to fail systems, it’s going to be a complete disaster. Deposit institutions shouldn’t be involved in speculative investment banking , which is what high yield usually is. You can’t pay high yields if you aren’t in turn doing any sort of high yield activity with investor deposits. Or without any sort of prop trading. Which he’s sort of suggesting this is going to be. Some of this sounds like it’s going to break the Volcker rule.
Not to even mention this might not qualify for FDIC protections.
Hmm, this seems like the sort of addition where it might have been nice to have a bunch of world leading developers and designers hanging around. Seems odd to fire them all if this was the plan.
Indeed that does seem like the sort of mistake that someone who made the largest purchase of thier life after staying up alll night playing Elden Ring would make, but i’m sure it was really a cunning 5d chess move and not evidence that our overlords who are born into wealth are just as dumb as the rest of us.
Indeed that does seem like the sort of mistake that someone who made the largest purchase of thier life after staying up alll night playing Elden Ring would make
Hey, playing Elden Ring takes some skill and dedication. Did you see the build he put on Twitter that time? It was hilariously stupid. In fairness, maybe he was playing all night with it just to get past very basic foes.
Oh they’re not as dumb as the rest of us, that’s the scary thing. They’re even dumber.
Sometimes I wonder if he’s doing it on purpose. Like, this has to be a joke, right?
The level of absurd stupidity from someone who’d once seemingly tricked us all into thinking he was really smart is just… baffling.
You need to watch Glass Onion
from someone who’d once seemingly tricked us all into thinking he was really smart
Well, …
That sound you just heard, was the collective intake of breath from various nation’s financial regulators.
I regret I have but one upvote to give. Well done!
Musk faces major challenges to get there, though. Convincing people why they need such a platform is one. Getting them to trust X with their entire financial life is another.
It’s less about trusting X but trusting Musk. Trying to make an “everything app” with him in charge just feels dystopian.
Even before Musk I wouldn’t have trusted Twitter with my finances or even just my credit card.
Sure, let me give all my money to the broke billionaire with the bad investment history - what could go wrong?!
I just feel like musk wants a western version of wechat for a hybrid user base of hardcore republicans and hardcore libertarians. That seems like such a fundamental oxymoron… but here we are.
And in fact, I hate to say it, but given how good those groups of people are at bending reality and making themselves conform to a warped capitalist standard, it might just work out for a while. But more than likely it’ll probably also go the way of “trump bucks” or whatever those psycho-loyalist cryptocoins were called. Basically it’ll end up a big old miserable fraud.
The again if it’s Elon’s coin on the table I’m not so sure I care. He’s just ruining spacex, tesla, et. al. Let him bleed money.
What’s genuinely sad is that the people who can’t bail from twitter quickly will be spitroasted by musk in the process.
What’s genuinely sad is that the people who can’t bail from twitter quickly will be spitroasted by musk in the process.
It takes two to spitroast.
Elon literally wants an underclass of peasants that owe him money so he can ship them off to Mars and act as his indentured servants.
https://theblemish.com/2020/01/elon-musk-just-invented-space-slavery/
The man is a fucking idiot.
Trying to make an “everything app” with him in charge just feels dystopian.
Trying to make an “everything app” at all, whoever is in charge is dystopian. Given the conspiracy theorists’ general alarm at new world order, one world government type scenarios it’s a wonder he isn’t pilloried for this by the same mad bastards who advocate for him. Maybe he is and I just haven’t kept up
Musk isnt Teh Gummint so he cant be part of Teh Ner Werld Erder
Yeah, so why is Bill Gates 5G microchip the conspiracy? Why not Elon Musk Starlink Neuralink? There is an actual evil mad scientist selling the technologies they are actually scared of, why don’t they just point their fears at the actual danger?
Sir, we do not try to understand the reasoning of people who did not reach their ideas though reason.
That sounds dangerous. Most people don’t reach their ideas through reason. I don’t want to lose empathy for all humanity no matter how ignorant they are.
Welll they have no empathy at all for you so I guess you take your chances
This is an onion, right?
Even if this wasn’t Elon Musk, the very idea of your boss having control over your finances sounds dumb as a brick.
[Musk] "And for some reason PayPal, once it became eBay, not only did they not implement the rest of the list, but they actually rolled back a bunch of key features, which is crazy. So PayPal is actually a less complete product than what we came up with in July of 2000, so 23 years ago.”
“And for some reason not only they didn’t implement a lot of my stupid ideas, but they reverted some of my dumbest takes that still went through. And 23 years later I still didn’t learn.”
I don’t even trust most banks. I like my credit union, thank you very much.
“Unless you give us all your money to put in our new bank, we might be facing insolvency issues.”
Yes. Also commenting on your Dig Dug icon, which I love!
