X is reportedly in talks with Circle to pay creator royalties in USDC, according to CoinDesk and multiple outlets citing a person familiar with the discussions. On the surface it’s a mundane fintech story: cheaper, faster cross-border payouts for a global creator base, following the same path Meta and several payment giants have already taken. But the surface story misses the more uncomfortable question underneath it: what happens when the infrastructure moving money to millions of people worldwide sits inside a platform controlled by one man, and that man has spent the last two years actively campaigning for far-right parties across Europe while promoting a racially charged conspiracy theory about his own home country?
What’s actually being proposed
To be precise about what we know: X is exploring USDC, a stablecoin issued and regulated by Circle, not a Musk-controlled token. Stablecoins are pegged to the US dollar and typically backed by cash and short-term treasuries held by the issuer, in this case Circle, which is a regulated, publicly traded company. X would not be minting money or controlling monetary policy; it would be a payments layer sitting on top of dollar-backed tokens someone else issues. That distinction matters, and any responsible criticism of this plan has to start from it rather than skip past it.
Where the real concern sits
The legitimate worry isn’t that Musk could somehow print dollars. It’s about control of the rail, not the currency. If X becomes the default way a large share of the world’s influencers and creators receive payment, X controls who gets paid, how fast, and under what conditions, including the ability to withhold, delay, or de-platform someone from their own income stream. That’s not a hypothetical concern with this particular owner. Musk has already used X’s algorithm and reach as a political instrument, not just a product.
The pattern is well documented, not speculative. Musk has repeatedly and personally endorsed Germany’s AfD, a party German intelligence services have investigated as a suspected extremist threat to democracy, posting “Only the AfD can save Germany” and addressing a party rally by video link urging Germans to move past what he called their “past guilt.” The German government publicly accused him of attempting to interfere in its election. He has also thrown his weight behind Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, reportedly weighing a nine-figure donation, pushed for the release of jailed far-right activist Tommy Robinson, and amplified content that UK officials say helped fuel anti-immigration riots. A PBS Frontline documentary released in late 2025 examined how Musk’s posts and algorithmic visibility on X gave the AfD, previously a fringe party, an international megaphone that analysts say was central to its rise to become Germany’s second-largest party.
On South Africa, the country of his birth, Musk has repeatedly promoted the claim that a “white genocide” is underway against Afrikaner farmers, a claim South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has called a “completely false narrative” and which the country’s courts and crime data do not support. In May 2025, his own AI chatbot Grok began inserting unprompted references to “white genocide” into completely unrelated conversations, an incident xAI attributed to an “unauthorized modification” but which drew scrutiny precisely because the claim tracks so closely with views Musk has voiced personally and often.
None of this proves X’s stablecoin plans are a vehicle for that agenda. They aren’t, at least not yet, and nothing reported so far suggests payment access has been or will be conditioned on a creator’s politics or identity. But the concern being raised isn’t paranoia about a specific feature; it’s a structural argument: a platform owner who has shown a documented willingness to use X’s reach to advance a political agenda tied to race and immigration is not a neutral party to trust with the financial plumbing millions of creators, including creators of colour and creators in immigrant communities, would come to depend on for their income.
Why this matters more for people of colour and immigrants specifically
Payment infrastructure isn’t politically neutral once ownership is. A creator’s income becoming dependent on a platform is already a precarious arrangement, X has phased out its old revenue-sharing model before with little notice, and it will happen again. Layer a payments rail on top of a platform where the owner has an established pattern of using account visibility, verification, and moderation decisions as political levers, and the risk isn’t abstract: it’s that access to income and access to political favour become entangled on a platform that already amplifies one side of exactly this debate.
This is the argument critics are making, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as alarmism. It is also, importantly, an argument about risk and structure, not a claim that harm has already occurred through this specific stablecoin plan.
The other side of this
Fairness requires laying out the pushback too. USDC is issued by Circle and regulated under US frameworks like the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin provisions, not by X, which limits how much unilateral control X actually has over the underlying asset even if it controls the interface. Musk’s defenders argue his European interventions reflect genuine, if controversial, political conviction about immigration and free speech rather than a calculated racial project, and note he has publicly rejected the “far right” label applied to the AfD, arguing its actual policy positions don’t match the description. It’s also true that no evidence has surfaced of X conditioning payment or account access on a creator’s race, immigration status, or political views, and doing so would likely trigger regulatory and legal exposure in the US and EU that would be difficult for X to survive. Stablecoin payment rails are also, in principle, more portable than traditional platform payouts: unlike an ad-revenue-share balance, a creator’s USDC sits in a wallet they control, which arguably reduces X’s leverage rather than increasing it.
The honest conclusion
The stablecoin story itself is small: a routine payments upgrade most major platforms are making. What makes it worth scrutiny is not the technology but the operator, and Musk’s public record on race, immigration, and European politics is not a matter of interpretation, it is a matter of public record, extensively reported across outlets spanning the political spectrum. Whether that record should disqualify him from being trusted with financial infrastructure that touches millions of livelihoods is a fair question to put to readers directly, rather than one this piece can answer for you. What’s clear is that the concern isn’t fringe conspiracy thinking, and it isn’t proven abuse either. It sits, uncomfortably, in between, exactly where good scrutiny of concentrated power is supposed to sit.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice.
