Elon Musk’s Twitter (aka X) is making a growing number of changes: A special Bitcoin emoji tied to a hashtag has been removed from the social media platform just as the world’s largest cryptocurrency conference, Bitcoin 2024, kicks off in Nashville. But this appears to be part of a broader move to move away from what Musk recently described as a “special hashtag.”
Previously, when users typed in the hashtag #Bitcoin, the logo of the largest cryptocurrency would appear next to it, but now that doesn’t work, with the social media platform’s PR department offering no explanation.
“We’re currently experiencing difficulties. Please check back later,” said Decrypt’s automated response to an emailed question.
Additionally, presidential candidate and recent Bitcoin advocate Donald Trump’s enduring campaign slogan, “MAGA (Make America Great Again),” no longer automatically generates an emoji of the former US leader when typed, which was apparently part of a paid campaign.
Amid questions surrounding the appearance of the MAGA hashtag emoji last week, Musk tweeted: “It’s not clear that the special hashtag is an advertisement, so I asked them to stop it anyway,” he said. He previously advocated for removing the hashtag from Twitter entirely in late 2023, but received backlash from longtime users. As of this writing, the hashtag still remains on the platform.
Twitter is particularly popular in the cryptocurrency community, where it is widely known as “crypto Twitter,” and has long served as a global industry meeting point and a place to find the latest chatter and memes. But overall, the reaction to Twitter’s move seems to be more indifferent than anything else.
“It doesn’t seem like a big deal,” said Lo Sirolet, chief commercial officer at bitcoin mining infrastructure company Succeed, telling Decrypto that he thinks Twitter may be trying to get organizations to pay to restore such functionality.
“It’s likely that X is trying to monetize the feature, which makes sense, but it annoys people when something that was previously free becomes paid,” he added. “No one ‘owns’ the Bitcoin brand, so I don’t know who would pay for the emojis.”
Bitcoin 2024 attendees who Decrypto spoke to in Nashville seemed similarly unfazed. [the emoji]”Sure, it’s a stupid thing to change, but it doesn’t matter,” one bitcoin enthusiast told Decrypt, while another said, “They’re cute, but bitcoin fans didn’t really care in the end.”
This isn’t the first time the social media platform has seen crypto-related (or at least crypto-neighborhood) emoji pranks: last year, X’s homepage replaced its bluebird logo with an emoji of a Shiba Inu, an internet meme.
This resulted in a surge in the price of Dogecoin, the original meme coin based on the meme. Elon Musk is a known fan of Dogecoin, and his social media actions have caused Dogecoin prices to skyrocket even before Musk owned Twitter.
There has been speculation that the website could be used as a cryptocurrency payments platform ever since Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, bought Twitter in late 2022. A document revealed in June put such plans on hold, at least for now, with no signs of long-rumored cryptocurrency plans.
Editor: Andrew Hayward