X has launched a feature called Cashtag that will let US users place stock trades through participating brokerages. The Elon Musk-owned social network announced the feature on Wednesday.
Initial partners include Interactive Brokers, Moomoo, Gemini, Kraken and Coinbase. According to X, users who tap on a supported Cashtag will be able to view the asset's price chart and related posts, then tap "Trade" to continue at a participating brokerage, where they sign in and complete the trade. Users can also tap on a brokerage partner to reach its mobile app or website to log in to an existing account or sign up for a new one.
Cashtags turn ticker symbols for stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies into links. The idea dates back to 2008, when the financial platform StockTwits introduced Cashtags for X-precursor Twitter, placing a dollar sign in front of stock ticker symbols to make market conversations easy to find and reference. Those Cashtags were about tracking conversations around a particular stock, not trading them.
"Cashtags close the gap between a ticker on the timeline and the market itself. When you post or tap a ticker, you're taken right to the asset, where you have seamless access to the live chart, the conversation around it, and now the ability to trade with one of our brokerage partners," said Mridul Singhai, X Product Engineering Lead, in a statement shared with TechCrunch.
Monique Pintarelli, SpaceXAI's Head of Global Advertising, said in a statement: "With our Cashtag partners, we're connecting the financial conversation to action. People come to X to discover what's happening, shape the conversation, and act in real-time on what matters to them. Our Cashtag partners make it possible to move seamlessly from discovery and conversation to a brokerage, without breaking the moment."
The feature could spur more market manipulation by AI-controlled bots, spammers and other bad actors, who could attempt to shift the conversation in one direction or another. But one could argue that this is already happening on X today, even without the direct connection to brokerages.