Elon Musk’s chat with Zeroda co-founder Nikhil Kamath on his ‘WTF is’ podcast has been grabbing a lot of attention, with Musk opening up about several key topics concerning Musk’s ventures and India. The CEO of Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), SpaceX and Neuralink, finally addressed his long-running, curious obsession with the letter ‘X,’ admitting that even he sometimes questions the love.
The clip, which has gone viral from the podcast, confirms Musk’s deep affinity for the letter that has branded nearly his entire professional life – from his original company, X.com (the precursor to PayPal), to the name of his aerospace venture, SpaceX, his artificial intelligence firm, xAI, and the massive rebranding of Twitter to X. He even named one of his children X Æ A-12 (known as X). Even the Tesla Model X electric SUV has the alphabet X.
Musk discusses his obsession with X
During the candid, black-and-white interview, Kamath posed the question that has been on the minds of millions of followers and critics alike, “Why do you like the letter X as much as you do?”
Musk’s response was unexpected in its self-aware humour. Rather than offering a definitive, strategic explanation, the billionaire simply laughed and confessed, “It’s a good question. Honestly, sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me.”
“It started way back in ancient times in ’99, the Precambrian era, when there were only sponges,” Musk said, adding to the humour. “There were only three one-letter domain names: X, Q, and Z (available). And I was like, okay, I want to create this place where it’s the financial crossroads or the financial exchange.”
Musk’s vision with X.com:
Musk’s vision with X.com in 1999 was to solve money from an information theory standpoint. “The current banking system is a large number of heterogeneous databases with batch processing that are not secure. If we could have a single database that was real-time and secure, that would be more efficient from a monetary, from an information theory standpoint than a large number of heterogeneous databases that batch process very slowly and insecurely,” said Musk
While the original X.com from 1999 eventually evolved into PayPal and was acquired by eBay eventually, the story didn’t end there. “Someone reached out from eBay and said, ‘Hey, do you want to buy the domain name back?’ And I was like, sure,” Musk recalled. He, however, didn’t hurry with it and held onto the domain for years.
Musk’s opportunity to use X again came with his acquisition of Twitter. “When I was acquiring Twitter, I was like, well, maybe this would also be an opportunity to revisit the original plan of X.com, which is to create this clearing house of financial transactions. Basically, to create a more efficient database — a money database is a way to think about it.”
The ‘WTF is?’ podcast sees Musk and Kamath discussing on the global trends and how the Tesla CEO envisions the future with regards to technology, morality and more.
