Twitter users can now trade stocks on the platform – sort of

In what looks to be another move to turn it into Elon Musk's dream "everything app," Twitter will begin allowing its users to trade stocks via "social trading company" eToro. This feature, which is now live on Twitter and in the Twitter app, essentially adds a button to Twitter's interface that will allow users to visit eToro …

[Anonymous Coward]

What a shame

I love twitter and I've been largely unaffected by the changes since Musk too charge.

But, in recent weeks the rise of assholes on that platform has become a tidal wave that I can no longer bare.

Plus Musk has really shown what a total fucktard he is and I'm not prepared to do anything to prop him up. You gotta have some principles. Fuck him.

[Kapsalon]

Re: What a shame

Hi James, give an example please

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What a shame

Please don't, the forum will run out of space.

[Flocke Kroes]

With Twitter owing money to world plus dog what sort of idiot would give Musk their credit card number?

[Anonymous Coward]

His fans, obviously. The parallels with Trump just keep on coming..

[katrinab]

When WeChat Pay initally launched, the alternative was handing over lumps of metal and sheets of paper that have an official government stamp on them.

That was also the case here when PayPal launched. It is not the case now, so TwitPay would be competing with a wide range of other mobile payment solutions.

Obviously I don't have Elon Musk's insightful business acumen, but I can't really think what TwitPay could offer that doesn't already exist elsewhere, bearing in mind that PayPal has already had the benefits of Musk's insight and inventiveness. These other payment solutions have the benefit that other people use them and the network effects that come along with that, and TwitPay would need to be considerably better than them to overcome that.

[TheMaskedMan]

Upvote just for TwitPay!

Presumably, payments integrated into Twitter would make it easy for one Twit to pay another Twit without leaving Twitter.

I could see that being potentially useful, a bit like a tipping setup; a Twit posts something useful / entertaining/ funny, and those that like it donate a little dosh just by clicking a link in the tweet.

Bound to be of interest to the adult industry, and maybe to other content creators too. And, if there is potential to make a little extra cash just by tweeting, it might bring in more users, too. I don't know if they'd make enough to cover the cost of verification, but it's an interesting idea in theory.

[MrDamage]

>> And, if there is potential to make a little extra cash just by tweeting, it might bring in more users, too.

Given the way Musks brilliance has worked so far, it'll be on a per tweet per follower basis, so once again you'll have celebutards buyng bots for false impresisons, and just spouting utter bollocks 24/7 for the Muskcents.

[katrinab]

Your idea would work even better though if you could make the payment using your existing PayPal account rather than have to open and fund a new TwitPay account.

Would PayPal's commission charges be cheaper than the cost of setting up a whole new system? That depends on the numbers, but my guess is probably it would.

[TheMaskedMan]

"Your idea would work even better though if you could make the payment using your existing PayPal account"

That very idea occurred to me not long after I'd posted. You could associate your Twitter account with a PayPal address, and pay directly. But his Muskiness wouldn't make much money that way. Maybe better to use PayPal to fund a TwitPay wallet. TwitCoins (or maybe Doge) are transferred between users, which can be cashed out to PayPal minus twitter's cut. Even better if the option is only available to verified users.

[Flocke Kroes]

Missing the capital

If a 'real' crypto currency is actually transferred between users, Twitter has to buy the coins so stops having the money then there are transaction fees and there is the possibility that the user may find a way to sell those coins without involving Twitter. Musk just bought a huge pile of GPUs for AI. He could use them for crypto mining instead and collect the transaction fees but that costs electricity.

The next step up would be to never transfer ownership of the coins and just keep track of transactions. No wasted electricity or external transaction fees but still the money went as soon as the coins were bought and at some point Musk has to find greater fool to sell to and cash out. Twitcoins are the obvious solution: he can mint new ones as needed for free. He can directly control the exchange rate so he can cause they appearance of high interest rates. He keeps the capital so he can use some of that to pay out to people who actually test the ability to sell. The exchange rate can fluctuate by the second so other people always buy a little high and sell a little low unless they catch on, then the price can plummet and he keeps all the money.

[ICam]

It's all about the puppies and not the doge kind...

> Upvote just for TwitPay!

Actually, it would be called TitPay.

> Bound to be of interest to the adult industry, and maybe to other content creators too.

Indeed.

[bo111]

Twitter changes for better

I like that now Twitter does not ask login to read content. I hate it in FB and Instagram, and hated it in Twitter before Musk.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Twitter changes ... back

Well before Musk, links to Twitter worked without a login or javascript. One of the pre-Musk changes to make the site completely non-functional without javascript. As I will not visit untrusted sites with javascript enabled I stopped following even the occasional link to Twitter well before the buy out. The current fashion is some sort of embed, perhaps an iframe with content loaded from Twitter if javascript is enabled. My FOMO has not been anywhere near sufficient to investigate.

Perhaps not requiring a log in is because Musk thought is was a good idea by itself. I could more easily believe it was a means to reduce the load on the log in servers after Musk turned off one of the data centers.

[doublelayer]

Re: Twitter changes ... back

Another comment alerted me to the existence of nitter.net, which can be substituted for twitter.com for reading tweets without using their interface. I don't use it very much, but it is much cleaner than trying to use Twitter's interface. If you find anything you want to see there, that trick can let you bypass them until Twitter finds a way to break it.

Off topic, there's also teddit.net, which does the same thing for Reddit. I don't know enough about Reddit to have a trust problem with them, but their interface is really annoying, so this can let you see the original post and the replies to that post without having to press about eight read more buttons. Probably not so useful if you post, but I just find things there I want to read on occasion.

[DS999]

If Facebook couldn't do it

There is absolutely not a chance in hell of an app with a far smaller userbase like Twitter becoming an "everything app". WTF is Musk smoking that he's stupid enough to believe people want to use Twitter to trade stocks?

I look forward to laughing at the abject failure this will become.

[arctic_haze]

Remind me shy do I need a Twitter account to trade on eToro

Because I'm pretty sure I do not need one.

[Cris E]

Re: Remind me shy do I need a Twitter account to trade on eToro

Because, you see, Twitter tips are the *best* and you'll be so overwhelmed by the golden insights that you won't have time to call your broker or log in to another site before investing everything you own in Parlor or X or whatever game show quality scheme is on offer. The! Best!

[Omnipresent]

To remind you all.

You are arguing with russian, saudi, and n korean operatives on twit.

[Michael Wojcik]

Sure, whatever

The people who can't kick their Twitter addiction are probably not well-suited to be impulse-trading stocks.

Which is fine, I suppose. More useful idiots landing on the wrong side of trades will inflate the market and pump up my retirement account.