Twitter to allow users to access stocks, crypto via eToro in financial push

Twitter will allow its users to access stocks, cryptocurrencies and other financial assets through a partnership with eToro, a social trading company.

Starting Thursday, a new feature will be rolled out on the Twitter app. It will allow users to view market charts; buy and sell shares and other assets from eToro; and view market data on several financial instruments, the company told CNBC exclusively.

Currently, it is already possible to see real-time trading data from TradingView on index funds such as the S&P 500 and shares in certain companies such as Tesla. This can be done using Twitter’s “cashtags” feature — you search for a ticker symbol and insert a dollar sign in front of it, after which the app will show you price information from TradingView using an API (application programming interface).

With the eToro partnership, Twitter cashtags will expand to cover far more instruments and asset classes, an eToro spokesperson told CNBC.

You will also be able to click on a button that says “watch eToro”, which will take you to eToro’s website, and then buy and sell assets on the platform. EToro uses TradingView as its market data partner.

“As we’ve grown tremendously over the past three years, we’ve seen more and more of our users interact on Twitter [and] educate yourself about the markets,” Yoni Assia, eToro’s CEO, told CNBC in an interview.

“There is very high quality content, real-time content about financial analysis of companies and what is happening around the world. We believe this partnership will enable us to reach the new audiences [and] better connect the brands to Twitter and eToro.”

The partnership marks a rare and notable business deal for Twitter since Elon Musk took the reins as CEO after buying the platform for $44 billion last year.

Founded in Israel in 2007, eToro is an online brokerage that allows users to buy and sell stocks, cryptocurrencies and index funds.

Among the most popular features is a feature that allows people to mimic the trading strategies of other users. The company has more than 32 million registered users across Europe, Asia and the United States, Assia said.

During Musk’s time as CEO, Twitter has cut staff sharply, reducing the number of employees from 8,000 to 1,500 when he took over, in an effort to reduce costs and reach profitability.

His actions have alarmed advertisers, with many brands leaving the platform amid concerns that content moderation standards would slip.

On Wednesday, Musk said “almost all” advertisers had returned to the app. However, Stellantis and Volkswagen, which stopped advertising there, said they do not yet plan to resume advertising.

Assia said he was working with the same team at Twitter on the stock market data tool that he had worked with on previous partnerships with the company.

Assia had no direct contact with Musk, he said. However, he joked that after meeting Warren Buffett and Bernard Arnault, who are among the world’s richest men, a meeting with Musk was inevitable.

“We’re very excited about the intersection of finance and social media,” Assia told CNBC in an exclusive interview this week.

Assia said “Fintwit,” or financial twitter, has become a popular trend on the app, which many use to find the latest news and updates on stocks and other assets. Twitter was a key platform involved in the 2021 retail boom.

Twitter added price data for $Cashtags in December 2022. Since the start of 2023, there have been more than 420 million searches for Cashtags, with an average number of searches of about 4.7 million per day.

Musk has made it his mission to turn Twitter into a so-called “super app”. Such apps tend to offer users a variety of services such as instant messaging, banking and travel.

The concept has proved very popular in East Asia. In China, internet giant Tencent offers payments through its WeChat messaging app.

Earlier this week, Musk changed the company name of Twitter to X Corp after merging with a shell company of that name, according to a lawsuit, highlighting his ambition to turn the company into a super app.

Weeks before completing the acquisition of Twitter, which followed several attempts to back out of the deal, Musk tweeted that buying the company was an “accelerator to make X, the alt app.”

“We follow that story probably like the rest of Twitter users,” Assia told CNBC. “So it will be exciting to see how Twitter focuses more on finance, and we hope to see our partnership expand beyond this step as well.”

Musk said at a Morgan Stanley conference last month that he wants Twitter to become “the largest financial institution in the world.”

SEE: Why retail investment has taken off in the US – but not Europe