Twitter Is Supposedly Working On A Crypto Wallet Product

This week, Twitter is stepping up its efforts to become a web3 frontrunner. A new web3-based crypto wallet for the social media company is in the works, according to reports first surfaced by established software frontend dev Jane Manchun Wong.

Let’s take a look at what we know in the early hours of these reports and what Twitter might do in the future.

What We Understand

Wong first mentioned the product on Twitter around midday on Monday:

There have been no official confirmations or mentions of the subject from the social media corporation. As Wong points out, the wallet is expected to handle deposits and withdrawals, but initial token support, as well as many other details, remains unknown. As a result, there is no set timeline for when we might get any confirmation or additional information.

Twitter has made a concerted attempt to be present in crypto, following in the footsteps of previous co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, which has been carried on by current CEO Parag Agrawal (as Dorsey subsequently moved on to fintech firm Block).

The Big Picture of Twitter

The rumors come at a difficult time for the company, with a potential buyout led by Elon Musk on the horizon – and a lot of speculation surrounding it. Of course, Twitter has sought crypto engagement through methods such as hexagonal profile pictures for NFT holders. However, social media endeavors have rarely achieved significant success thus far, though recent projects such as Reddit’s avatar NFT integration have done well.

Meanwhile, crypto wallets have been widely viewed as a potential growth area for blockchains, but rarely for social networking networks. After about a year of activity, legacy social platform Meta (formerly Facebook) axed its largely unsuccessful Novi initiative in recent months. That followed the failure of comparable enterprises such as Diem (formerly branded as Libra). Elsewhere, crypto veterans have primarily relied on Metamask’s simplicity and efficiency for hot wallets, but there are still unfulfilled user needs – in both usefulness and aesthetics.

If true, Twitter’s wallet development should come as no surprise – but only time will tell if Twitter can demonstrate that it isn’t all about being first to market.