Author: Billy Bambrough, Forbes
Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News
Elon Musk has rarely called out orders as frequently as in 2021, but he has pushed X one step closer to the crypto market. This article analyzes how Musk is laying out the next round of Bitcoin and crypto market trends: instead of relying on a single tweet, he is linking discussions, market trends, and trading portals.
On the same day, the price of Bitcoin rushed to around $87,000, then fell slightly and remained at multi-month highs. That's still far from the previous high of about $126,000 in October 2025, but it's enough to boost sentiment in a market that has spent much of the year hovering in the $60,000 to $80,000 range. Dogecoin strengthened simultaneously, once again reaching $0.10, with a 24-hour increase of more than 10%. The market sees two things together: the price is rising, and X turns "seeing the coin" into "click to buy it."
What did X do and didn’t do?
The change is in Cashtag. US users click on stock tags such as $BTC, $ETH, $XRP, $SOL, $DOGE, or $TSLA, $COIN on the timeline to see a larger real-time chart, related posts, and a "Trade" button. Click to jump to Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, or Interactive Brokers, Moomoo. Crypto assets are listed on the top three exchanges, and stocks and ETFs are listed on the last two brokerages. Logging in or opening an account, placing orders, and hosting are all completed on the partner platform. X does not match, liquidate, or touch customer funds, but only serves as the discovery and diversion layer.
Mridul Singhai, a member of the X product engineering team, said Cashtag aims to bridge the gap between timeline information and market execution. The feature is currently only available to users in the United States, and there is no timetable for other markets. For a platform with hundreds of millions of daily users, the significance of this step is not that "X becomes an exchange", but that it changes the encryption discussion from a spectator to an enforceable one. In early 2026, Smart Cashtag will be able to display real-time quotes; now there are additional ways to place orders. Information turns into actions, eliminating the friction of opening a browser, searching for an exchange, and registering again.
This is a two-way street from X Money. X Money was released to some Premium users in the middle of this year, providing legal currency transfer, savings and Visa card services. It advertised a yield rate and cash rebate of about 6%. It did not include encryption functions when it was launched. The regulatory license follows the path of currency transfer and bank cooperation. First, build a legal currency base, and then discuss stablecoins or encryption integration. Musk’s team previously confirmed that crypto transactions will be accessed through Smart Cashtag and that X itself will not act as a broker. The trading button launched in September is equivalent to putting that sentence into practice. The market is still speculating whether Bitcoin, Dogecoin or stablecoins will be embedded into X Money next, but there is no official timetable at the moment.
Companies and people: We have coins in our accounts and we talk about energy.
Tesla still holds about 11,509 Bitcoins, worth nearly $1 billion at current prices, and its holdings have increased in value by about $123 million this week. SpaceX's listing materials disclosed about 18,712 pieces, which once doubled the outside estimate of the size of the position, and the purchase cost was about $661 million. The two companies have a total of more than 30,000 coins, ranking fifth in the world in terms of listed companies’ Bitcoin holdings. Musk has personally stated that he holds Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin, but the specific amount has never been made public. The market treats him as a crypto sentiment switch, looking at his influence, not exactly how many coins he has in his pocket.
In his public statements in recent years, the focus has shifted from "whether to buy or not" to "what money is." He wrote: Energy is the real currency; legal currency can be printed, but energy cannot be faked; Bitcoin is built on energy. He also told The Economist that if AI and robots push supply to extreme abundance in about ten years, money as a concept may no longer be important. The Bitcoin circle understood this as: He did not withdraw from the narrative, but just talked about the lower level - computing power, electricity, and settlement that cannot be forged.
This discourse stands in contrast to 2021. At that time, Tesla once accepted Bitcoin payments, but later suspended it due to mining energy consumption; then the company sold most of its positions, leaving the current batch. Musk turned to Dogecoin and memes, briefly moved closer to the policy field during the Trump cycle, and then distanced himself again. The price no longer jumps to his name, but once X changes his product, the market will still reprice him.
Prices are rising, but that doesn’t mean the cycle has been confirmed
In mid-September, Bitcoin was still around $75,500. It rose by more than 15% in a few days, hitting about $87,300 during the session, and then fell back to the range of $85,000 to $86,000. Spot volume has increased significantly. On-chain data platform Glassnode pointed out that the Bitcoin MVRV ratio is back above the 365-day moving average, a momentum signal that has previously appeared before the start of the bull market in 2019 and 2023. Some analysts regard the 365-day moving average as a "bull market signal", and the next level of resistance is US$88,000 to US$90,000. Some analysts also reminded that the early short squeeze significantly amplified the increase - more than $648 million of short positions in the entire market were forcibly liquidated, forming a self-reinforcing cycle of "breakthrough-liquidation-breakthrough again". It is not appropriate to pursue higher leverage, and it is necessary to first observe whether the $82,000 area can stabilize.
The total market capitalization of the crypto market is back close to $3 trillion, with Bitcoin accounting for approximately 59%. These figures can show that the rebound is substantial, but cannot alone prove that the four-year cycle has turned.
The macro narrative is still the old theme: US debt expansion, changes in the monetary environment, gold first, and so-called depreciation transactions returning to digital assets. Kevin O'Leary and others have put the upper limit of the next round very high. He proposed that Bitcoin is expected to account for 1% to 3% of institutional alternative asset allocations. Based on this, it is estimated that the price will fall in the range of US$253,000 to US$760,000. If the upper limit is reached, the market value will reach US$15 trillion. He also pointed out that for Bitcoin to reach $1 million, the industry needs to first resolve external concerns that quantum computing may break encryption standards. Forecasts themselves are extremely volatile and are only suitable as emotional coordinates.
For traders, the facts that can be checked at the moment are not complicated. First, X brought the encryption discussion to a licensed exchange and first tested the waters in the United States. Second, the two core companies within Musk’s system are still large-scale corporate currency holders, and their positions are publicly available. Third, payment products will first use fiat currency, and encryption integration is listed as a plan rather than an online function. Fourth, the currency price rebounded from the low of the year to the high of several months, but it is still far away from the previous high.
The opening of the entrance is not the starting gun for the bull market, and fewer posts does not mean leaving the market. If the next round does come, the market will look back at this step: not what Musk shouted again, but whether hundreds of millions of people have only one click left to buy the currency when they swipe $BTC.