Memecoin Projects Distribute $1.44M to X Users Through X Money

$1.44M Routed Through X Money

Memecoin projects have found a fresh marketing channel in X Money's peer-to-peer payment rail, sending direct cash payments to X users instead of the token drops that defined earlier cycles. Data current as of September 26, 2026 shows payouts distributed this way have surpassed $1.44 million in total, and individual transfers have in some cases climbed above $13,000. Because X Money does not yet support native crypto, an intermediary service called UsePaid converts the crypto that projects send into dollars and delivers the funds straight into a user's X Money account — no wallet setup, no token sale, no manual claim required. A screenshot circulating alongside the dataset shows a single X Money account holding more than $32,745 across incoming payments from multiple different projects. According to data shared by Coin Bureau on X, the setup makes project-sent crypto immediately accessible to recipients who never touch a token or an on-chain balance.

shared by Coin Bureau on Xhttps://x.com/coinbureau/status/2103775903658443112

The mechanics invert the classic distribution playbook. Traditional campaigns hand out tokens first and hope holders stick around; here, users receive spendable dollars up front, and the visibility compounds when recipients post their balances publicly, generating organic reach and trading interest for the issuing token. In effect, the model works like a paid crypto faucet reversed and run at advertising scale — rather than users completing tasks for micro-rewards, projects pay users upfront for attention. Our read of the flow: this is marketing spend, not yield. The payments alone do not establish that the sending projects are credible or that their tokens carry sustainable economics; a large headline total can just as easily reflect a budget allocated to buying speculative attention. What the $1.44 million figure does confirm is that X Money's rail has become a live distribution surface for crypto promotion before any native crypto support has even shipped on the platform.

Ethena Ends USDe Incentives

Against that spend-to-grow backdrop, Ethena (ENA) chose the opposite path. The synthetic dollar protocol announced that all token incentives for USDe — and the emissions attached to them — will stop entirely at the end of September, with no new token issuance afterward. Incentives linked to USDe have already been cut by roughly 85% since the protocol's first airdrop in 2024, per the team's own statement, which credited the users who carried USDe to its current scale and framed the move as a shift from incentive-led growth toward a more durable structure. The market read the end of dilution as bullish: ENA jumped to $0.28 intraday, standing out among altcoins, per HTX data. Momentum also draws support from a separate development — on September 25, Ethena announced a collaboration with Binance to extend USDe's basis-trade strategy beyond crypto perpetuals into stock perpetuals. Under the planned model, Ethena would buy bStocks, tokenized stock certificates issued by Binance-affiliated entities that wrap listed equities of the Rivian (RIVN) variety, and hedge the position by shorting USDT-margined stock perpetuals on the same platform — opening a revenue stream tied to traditional equity-market basis rather than crypto funding rates. That matters because USDe competes for settlement flows that Tether is also targeting with its USDT-native Stable (Stablechain) layer-1, and every basis point of organic yield counts once the Ethena dapp stops subsidizing growth with fresh supply. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Distribution Economics Diverge

COINOTAG's take: the two stories are the same ledger read from opposite ends. Memecoin issuers are spending $1.44 million and counting to rent attention on X Money, while Ethena's official announcement confirms it will spend zero more — ending all emissions at month-end and betting that USDe demand is now organic. The untested question for the paid-payout model is retention once the transfers stop; for Ethena, it is whether subsidy-free yield from stock-perp basis trades can hold the $0.28 repricing. Watch UsePaid payout volume and ENA's post-emissions baseline through October.