Elon & Twitter

[PeterJA]

About the “couple of days”: that’s mostly for international payments. Within the same country it’s typically overnight. Those payments typically have 0 service cost. In Belgium there’s a system of instant payments but not all banks provide it for free. The ECB wants the entire EU to go to instant payments 24/7 Instant payments and is making sure the infrastructure is available.
There was big debate a couple of decades ago when the cash couriers went on a very long strike in Belgium. As a result, the distribution sector and the banks agreed to lower the fee for a chip card payment to a couple of cents of a frank. In euro that’s about 0.05 eurocents.
So electronic payments are basically free. Except for credit card payments, I honestly don’t know why they keep accepting that (with 2-3% commissions) with all the free payment options available. There are still a lot of supermarkets that don’t accept credit cards because of those fees.
Fun fact: my bank, an online only bank (Keytradebank), pays me 2 cents per external transaction on my bank account.
Elon needs to pay me more than 2 cents per transaction to be competitive with my bank.
And since the introduction of the Euro, there are no currency exchange fees anymore in the eurozone.

Within the US and for US-to-Europe, my wire payments are same-hour if requested before the end-of-day cutoff time. Also, my dad can beat up your dad.

Your bank paying you for transactions sounds great! Do they make it up in volume?

Seriously, even if the EU financial system is near-perfect, I bet we can agree that connecting it to a near-perfect system elsewhere would be a benefit to humanity.

 

[NicoV]

Within the US and for US-to-Europe, my wire transfers are same-hour if requested before the end-of-day cutoff time. Also, my dad can beat up your dad.

Your bank paying you for transactions sounds great! Do they make it up in volume?

Seriously, even if the EU financial system is near-perfect, I bet we can agree that connecting it to a near-perfect system elsewhere would be a benefit to humanity.

My comments were just to indicate the big challenge Elon would have to get any meaningful market share in Europe. Electronic payments are a solved problem in Europe, and I am not sure what unique selling proposition a new payment system should have.

 

[AudubonB]

Hope and ye shall receive?

Welllll…I have been hoping some with knowledge of the European banking system would chime in with their viewpoints regarding the current situation in the US and Mr Musk’s purported task, and @NicoV and @unk45 have done just that.

There is inconsistency just within the US too, though. My investment bank gets wire transfers out in moments - literally less than two minutes for US transactions to go through; a large Canadian one a month ago took about ten minutes, and they charge me nothing. NOW - this very well may be because of the size of my account; in other words, money talks (gee - whodathunk), but the important point is that it can be done: the infrastructure obviously is present.

 

[PeterJA]

My comments were just to indicate the big challenge Elon would have to get any meaningful market share in Europe. Electronic payments are a solved problem in Europe, and I am not sure what unique selling proposition a new payment system should have.

How about the proposition of making fast free payments to anyone in the world.

 

[SOULPEDL]

How about the proposition of making fast free payments to anyone in the world.

Reminds me of Paypal.

 

[NicoV]

How about the proposition of making fast free payments to anyone in the world.

There’s already Paypal for that.
And it’s a very small corner case if you live in one of the big economic blocks.
And my comments were about 1 of those blocks, the Eurozone. 342 million people.

 

[Snerruc]

Hope and ye shall receive?

Welllll…I have been hoping some with knowledge of the European banking system would chime in with their viewpoints regarding the current situation in the US and Mr Musk’s purported task, and @NicoV and @unk45 have done just that.

There is inconsistency just within the US too, though. My investment bank gets wire transfers out in moments - literally less than two minutes for US transactions to go through; a large Canadian one a month ago took about ten minutes, and they charge me nothing. NOW - this very well may be because of the size of my account; in other words, money talks (gee - whodathunk), but the important point is that it can be done: the infrastructure obviously is present.

Whenever I fake a large check to my bank, they clear it while I stand there. It can be and is done in the US. I just tell them to do it.

 

[Unpilot]

It seems to me that those two guys working together to make something that minimizes erroneous costs per transaction could be exactly the right combination to ferret out a better way of doing things.

Shift4 already has the connections set up. That would be a boon, like taking on an established user base (Twitter) instead of building it from scratch.

Just because Shift4 is currently using the traditional channels in no way indicates there would be no change to that in the future.

This looks like magic in the works to me.

I agree .....why does it take 2-3 business days for funds to "settle" in 2022?

You do have to wonder what the banks that own Visa will do when it looks like their 2-3% is threatened.

 

[StealthP3D]

I actually love that simple single word reply! I hope everyone that sees that article automatically sees that reply!

I think you are starting to see how Twitter can offer some value to Tesla. I'm guessing a lot of people will see that Elon called the story "False" now that he owns Twitter.

 

[FireMedic]

Whenever I fake a large check to my bank, they clear it while I stand there. It can be and is done in the US. I just tell them to do it.

How many fake checks do you take to your bank? They don’t mind?

 

[FSDtester#1]

Whenever I fake a large check to my bank, they clear it while I stand there. It can be and is done in the US. I just tell them to do it.

Did you mean "fake" ? If so, and it works, DM me please with your secret

 

[StealthP3D]

A very US centric view. Europe‘s financial industry is a lot more modern. You can basically wire money from any EU bank account to any other EU bank account. In the worst case this takes a couple of days max, in the best case the payment arrives in real time.
In Belgium everybody stopped accepting checks as a form of payment 2 decades ago.
Electronic payment via chip cards is available everywhere. For situations where a bank terminal is too expensive (because of the rental price of the terminal) QR code payments are used more and more. There’s nothing to disrupt in the EU anymore. Elon can only create a me-too payment system like Paypal.

I think one thing that will probably set X.com apart is the wide variety of services and transactions available under one roof. And I'm sure AI will be able to add a lot of value that goes untapped in traditional financial services businesses. That said, there is no indication Elon plans to disrupt Europe's financial services. Disruption is always targeted towards markets that are ripe for disruption.

 

[PeterJA]

There’s already Paypal for that.
And it’s a very small corner case if you live in one of the big economic blocks.
And my comments were about 1 of those blocks, the Eurozone. 342 million people.

Paypal is not free, and not conveniently integrated into a communication app that verifies the identity of sender and receiver.

 

[scottf200]

I'm sure there were a lot of sellers and buyers ...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1591133819918114816

 

[BitJam]

Let's keep score:

o Free Speech Absolutism: Discarded, completely unviable and immediately proven to not even be what Elon himself wants
o We don't need no stinking advertisers: Actually it turns out we do
o Let's yell at and threaten the advertisers for leaving: Um... that doesn't seem to be helping
o Raise prices on content creators: Oops, they're leaving. This reminds me of the advertiser issue
o Sell Verified Accounts to anyone with $8: Oops we seem to be getting a lot of new fraudulent accounts
o Fire most of the humans that verify identity: Oops, we just verified Jesus

It really feels like an 8 year old making random decisions in a room full of yes-men

Excellent points!

I would like to add that if any web site I currently use espoused the same vile conspiracy theories and political rhetoric now coming from Twitter, I would drop them instantly and use alternatives.

 

[Sancho]

I’m not saying that Elon’s selling, and Twitter “overhang”, didn’t have an impact on the SP this week, but the biggest factor to me always seems the same week after week: the outsized influence of options.

Doesn’t it look to you that the last two days has been mostly a gargantuan effort to keep the SP far enough from a $200 Friday close to protect the big $200 weekly call wall?

And I’m still uncertain whether there’s anything nefarious about that. Is there really an evil empire of MSMs in cohoots with big media, big oil and legacy auto? Or is it just market dynamics at work when there is an unprecedented amount of speculation in short term options that expire each week? These weekly call and put walls create very powerful magnets that pull SP prices in certain directions.

Perhaps we have met the enemy and he is us! (or those of us speculating in options).

 

[EVNow]

Fire most of the humans that verify identity: Oops, we just verified Jesus

We have banks that open accounts etc without a human "verifying". You don't need humans to verify everything - that just doesn't scale.

I can setup Google Payment on my phone without a human verification. Why do we need human verification for Twitter ?

 

[Knightshade]

We have banks that open accounts etc without a human "verifying". You don't need humans to verify everything - that just doesn't scale.

I can setup Google Payment on my phone without a human verification. Why do we need human verification for Twitter ?

Because your google payments account can't robotically mass spam a bunch of people with scams or hate speech, while your twitter account can

 

[mongo]

I'm sure there were a lot of sellers and buyers ...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1591133819918114816

The tweet was on the 10th. That Tweet thread supposes today's drop is due to the blacklash of public realizing how much they charge for insulin and that the patent was originally sold to a university for $1 to allow it to be accessible.
Insulin in America: A Right or a Privilege?

 

[scottf200]

The tweet was on the 10th. That Tweet thread supposes today's drop is due to the blacklash of public realizing how much they charge for insulin and that the patent was originally sold to a university for $1 to allow it to be accessible.
Insulin in America: A Right or a Privilege?

Curious take. I would have thought the public would have known since the $35/mo discussions have been in the public for months and months.
I'm quite aware of the cost of insulin as I have family with T1D since they were kids.