Elon Musk's social platform X is discussing the use of stablecoins to pay creators and content providers, with Circle's USDC being one of the payment options under consideration.

According to insiders, X is evaluating how to use stablecoins to pay influential users for content-related income, including royalties or incentive payments; discussions are still in the early stages, and payment methods, launch timelines, settlement channels, and covered countries have not yet been determined. X has not publicly responded.

The direct value of this plan lies in cross-border micropayments. X could use a single digital dollar-denominated asset for near-real-time settlements with creators in different countries, reducing the multi-currency exchanges, intermediary fees, business hour restrictions, and delays involved in traditional cross-border bank remittances.

SpaceX has already accepted stablecoin payments for Starlink service fees in some emerging markets, indicating that Musk's companies are using stablecoins for cross-border payment scenarios; however, this does not mean that X's creator payment plan has been formally approved or is in actual operation.

X hired former Coinbase Base design head Benji Taylor as design director in March this year, responsible for work across X, xAI, and SpaceX. His experience in wallet, DeFi, and Layer-2 product design provides an internal talent base for X to explore stablecoin settlements, wallet entry, and creator payments.

X is also migrating its long-running Revenue Sharing income distribution mechanism to the Original Content Rewards Program. The new plan aims to shift the focus of rewards towards original viewpoints, expertise, reporting, creative content, and commentary; if stablecoins are integrated, they will become the payment track for this incentive system, rather than just a showcase of crypto functionality.

In market mechanisms, creators, media accounts, and multinational content producers are the buyers of low-threshold payments, while X is the payment distributor. Circle and other stablecoin issuers, wallets, exchanges, on-chain settlement networks, and fiat deposit and withdrawal service providers make up the supply side. If X adopts USDC, Circle will gain high-frequency distribution and settlement use cases; traditional cross-border payment intermediaries and creator payment models that rely on minimum withdrawal thresholds, long settlement cycles, and high exchange fees will be under pressure. Actual implementation still depends on KYC, sanctions screening, tax reporting, wallet custody, local stablecoin regulations, and fiat exchange coverage.

Source: Public Information