Elon Musk told a Morgan Stanley conference last month he wants Twitter to become “the biggest financial institution in the world.”
At first, Twitter will let its users access stocks, cryptocurrencies and other financial assets through a partnership with eToro, a social trading company. Starting Thursday, a new feature will be rolled out on the Twitter app. It will allow users to view market charts on an expanded range of financial instruments and buy and sell stocks and other assets from eToro.
„eToro, the social trading and investing network, has partnered with Twitter to enable Twitter users to instantly see real-time prices for a far wider range of stocks, crypto and other assets when using the new $Cashtags feature.” – acccording to a press release.
Twitter users searching using a $Cashtag symbol currently see live price charts for a select few financial assets. Following the launch of the eToro partnership, the list of $Cashtags that produce live price charts will be hugely expanded, while users will now also be able to click through to the eToro platform to see more information on the asset and have the option to invest. The partnership will cover $Cashtags representing a wide range of instruments on the eToro platform, from stocks and ETFs to crypto and commodities.
Yoni Assia, CEO and Co-Founder of eToro, said: “Financial content on social media has provided education to many who have felt excluded by more traditional channels. Twitter has become a crucial part of the retail investing community – it’s where millions of ordinary investors go every day to access financial news, share knowledge and converse. As the social investing network, eToro was built on these very principles – community, knowledge-sharing and better access to financial markets. There is power in shared knowledge and by transforming investing into a group endeavour, we can yield better results and become more successful, together.”
Twitter added pricing data for $Cashtags in December 2022 and the feature has seen widespread adoption with more than 420 million searches for $Cashtags since the start of the year. There are on average 4.7 million $Cashtag searches a day with activity increasing around prominent earnings announcements, e.g. on 2 February 2023, when Apple released its Q4 22 earnings, $cashtag searches hit 8 million. The most commonly used $Cashtag was $TSLA (Tesla), with $SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and $BTC (Bitcoin) also ranking in the top 5.
Chris Riedy, Vice President, Global Sales & Marketing at Twitter, said: “Twitter is what’s happening and what people are talking about right now. We believe real change starts with conversation and finance and investing is a growing part of that conversation. We are pleased to partner with eToro to provide Twitter users with additional market insights and greater access to investment capabilities. Twitter will continue to invest in growing the #FinTwitter community.”
The increased use of $Cashtags is part of a growing trend of financial discourse on Twitter. In the first 90 days of 2023 there were 498 million tweets about business and finance globally. 65% of the Tweets were from users in the 18-34 age group.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
