X is in talks to pay its most influential creators in stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC, according to a CoinDesk report, a move that would route royalty payouts onto blockchain rails and fold crypto into Elon Musk’s growing payments business. A person familiar with the plans told CoinDesk the discussions remain active and that they also advise other social platforms testing stablecoins to pay influencer commissions. X did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment at the time of this writing.
The reported interest surfaces as stablecoins push past a combined $301 billion market cap and work their way into everyday payment flows, from small businesses to multinationals shifting large sums between subsidiaries. USDC holds roughly 24.03% of that supply at $72.464 billion, trailing Tether’s USDT, which controls 60.68% at $182.962 billion. A stablecoin payout rail at X’s scale would channel fresh demand toward whichever token it picks.
Not Musk’s First Crypto Rail
Musk’s companies already move money over stablecoins, with SpaceX collecting Starlink payments in them across emerging markets and settling cross-border transfers without touching banks. That template gives X a proven path for paying a scattered creator base in dollars without wiring cash through slow, costly correspondent banks.
X leaned further in during March by hiring Benji Taylor as head of design, a role wired into both xAI and SpaceX. Taylor led design at Base, Coinbase’s blockchain network, and brings deep experience in wallets and decentralized finance to a company positioning itself for on-chain payments.
X’s own payments push makes the timing logical. X Money went live for US users in late June with a Visa debit card and money transmitter licenses in 41 states plus DC, but it shipped fiat-only, with no stablecoin or on-chain settlement. Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Musk ahead of the launch on whether X Money’s stablecoin ambitions could threaten financial stability and leave users without deposit insurance.
USDC itself sits at the center of these plans, and Circle recently renewed its distribution deal with Coinbase while ruling out payouts to token holders, cementing the rails a company like X would tap.
A Rebuilt Creator Deal
X is tearing up how it pays the people who post, retiring its Revenue Sharing program and standing up the Original Content Rewards Program in its place. The new system pays for substance, targeting creators who bring “original ideas, expertise, reporting, creativity, and commentary” to X, the company said. Settling those rewards in stablecoins would let X reach a global creator base directly, though no payment method is official yet.
YouTube already lets US creators in its Partner Program take earnings in PayPal’s PYUSD, with PayPal handling the conversion on the back end. Meta went live with USDC creator payouts in the Philippines and Colombia, routing the money over Solana and Polygon. Big platforms keep quietly wiring stablecoins into how they pay talent, and X looks set to join the list.