X Explores Paying Creators in USDC as Stablecoin Market Reaches $310B

X is in early talks to pay content creators in stablecoins such as Circle's USDC, according to a person familiar with the matter who also works with other social platforms testing stablecoin creator payouts. The discussions are preliminary and unconfirmed. They follow a broad overhaul of X's creator monetization: enrollment in Creator Revenue Sharing closed on Aug. 7, the legacy program is set to retire on Sept. 7 and a final payout is expected on or around Sept. 11. On Sept. 8, existing members can begin applying to the Original Content Rewards Program, which the platform's creator documentation describes as built for original, high-quality content that reflects a creator's own voice, expertise or creativity. Payouts under the new program hinge on qualified impressions — unique views from Premium users on the Home Timeline where at least half the post is visible. Creators must hold X Premium, maintain 500 verified followers and accumulate 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users over 90 days. Payments are made biweekly, with a $30 minimum. That payout shape — small, frequent and cross-border — is where card networks and correspondent banks are least efficient. Stablecoins, a major segment of the broader altcoin market, settle in minutes and can reach a creator who holds no U.S. bank account. The stablecoin market is now roughly $310 billion, a scale that has moved well beyond the algorithmic stablecoin designs that dominated the sector's early experiments. X's payments arm, X Money, launched this year for U.S. Premium subscribers with a Visa debit card, peer-to-peer transfers and bill pay, but it shipped without a crypto component. SpaceX has collected Starlink payments in stablecoins in emerging markets, according to public comments by investor Chamath Palihapitiya. A stablecoin payout rail would extend that infrastructure beyond the U.S. and into creator settlement.

Separately, applications close Aug. 20 for 10X Founders Demo Day v2.0, an online pitch event scheduled for Aug. 25. Organizers Inspira Labs, Yellow and Cicada opened registration for eight hand-picked startups to present five-minute pitches followed by two-minute judge Q&A sessions; every team that makes the stage gets written scorecards from all judges. The prize pool is worth more than $150,000, but it is structured less like a cash giveaway and more like pre-arranged infrastructure. Sonic, the anchor partner, contributes a $20,000 ecosystem grant, a place in its builder program and hands-on technical support. Injective may add up to $20,000 after internal due diligence; Hacken is providing $15,000 in audit credits; Atlas, an oracle provider, is offering $5,000 in first-party price data sourced from more than 905 exchanges plus a free listing on a major market-data platform; and a media accelerator is adding $10,000 in promotion. Galxe, 1inch and Cryptic complete the package with community tools, API access on a widely used DeFi trading layer similar to 0x Protocol's exchange infrastructure, and growth services. The eight confirmed judges include representatives from Animoca Brands, Contribution Capital, Comma3 Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Funders VC, Zee Prime Capital, Dracoon Ventures and Moonhill Capital, with additional names to be announced. The organizers are looking for founders with a working product or early market traction who plan a token generation event within three to six months and are ready to defend their projects in front of active investors. The first edition drew more than 150 applications, put 12 teams on stage and ended with Backyard Finance winning a $125,000 pool as more than 7,000 people watched the livestream. For v2.0, organizers say applications passed 100 within four days, all organic, and stage slots were deliberately cut to eight.

The reported talks are not the only sign X is deepening its crypto posture. In March, the company brought on Benji Taylor — the former design lead for Coinbase's Base blockchain — as design director spanning X, xAI and SpaceX, a hire widely read as signaling that crypto payments are on the product roadmap across Musk's companies. The transition to the new creator-payout model has also gained a concrete date: the first disbursements under the Original Content Rewards Program are now scheduled for Sept. 25. That schedule, paired with Taylor's mandate and SpaceX's existing Starlink stablecoin collections, points to an X that treats the rewards overhaul and a potential stablecoin settlement rail as one sequenced initiative rather than a pair of unrelated experiments.

(as of 22:41 UTC) The through-line is incentive design. X is weighing a settlement layer that lets creators be paid in dollar-pegged tokens without bank intermediaries, while the demo day bundles audit, oracle, listing and media services instead of relying on a simple token airdrop to attract founders. Our reading of X's own creator documentation is that the new rewards program already pushes payments toward the kind of small, recurring, global transfers stablecoins handle best; the reported USDC talks are the logical next step. For 10X, the anchor-partner model makes chain selection part of the diligence process rather than an afterthought. Neither initiative is a finished product, but both signal a market shifting from speculative token distribution toward infrastructure that can actually route money and support early teams.