X Money's 6% Rate: Who Holds Your Money and What It Means for Banks

Every single bank in America has something on its radar that genuinely scares it. And it's got nothing to do with a property crash or another crypto blowout. It's one man, Elon Musk. Now, you'd probably assume I mean Tesla or the rockets or the robots or whatever Grock's doing next. It's none of those guys.

It's something he's been building quietly in the background while the whole internet was busy arguing about everything else. and it goes straight at the one thing every bank on the planet depends on, which is your money sitting still. Here's a number that started all of this. According to the FDIC, the national average savings rate in America in October 2026 was 0.38%. Put 10 grand in, leave it a whole year, and you've earned $38. And the richest man alive looked at that number and decided to do something about it.

[music]

Able Runners, welcome back. The thing's called X Money. Same X you scroll every night, the old Twitter. And in M's own words, this is what he wants it to become.

Uh, [clears throat] for X Money, we're uh we actually had X Money uh live in closed beta within the company. Um and we expect in the next uh month or two uh to go to uh a limited uh external beta and then to go worldwide to uh all X users and this is really intended to be the place where all the money is the the central source of of all uh monetary transactions. So it's it's a it's really going to be a game changer.

The central source of all monetary transactions not some of them all of them every paycheck every bill every transfer living inside one app. Elon Musk's social media app X began offering its X Money banking service to all its US premium and premium plus subscribers on Monday.

Enough young people to take care of the old people.

X Money allows users to make peer-to-peer payments, pay bills, and send checks.

Uh well, there is

as it is in China.

The service expands on features tested in late June, allowing customers to hold deposits at Cross River Bank with insurance up to $250,000. And on the 27th of July 2026, he switched it on for paying subscribers right across America. Up to 6% a year on your balance, up to 3% cash back on a Metal Visa card, free payments to anyone on X, and deposits held at a partner bank with FDIC insurance up to $250,000, plus a sweep on eligible accounts that spreads bigger balances across other banks for covering up to 10 million. Then in September 2026, X moved its US creator payouts onto X Money as well. So the people posting on X now get paid straight into M app, 6% against 0.38.

That's nearly 16 times what the average American savings account pays. So stick with me because I'm going to show you exactly what he's built, why Washington was writing to him before it even launched, and the one question you need to answer too before you go anywhere near it. And me and you hold crypto. So listen up because that one question sits underneath every single coin you own as well. On top of that, there's an XRP link doing the rounds and I'll give you what's documented, what's rumor, and you can make your own mind up.

And there's a change X told account holders about on the 30th of October 2026 that moves a headline number and I'll get to that one in a couple of minutes. So let's start with what X Money actually is because the name throws people. It sounds like a bank. It looks like a bank. It pays interest like a bank, but X's own help pages spell it out in black and white.

X Payments, the company behind it, says plainly that it's not an FDIC insured bank. Your money sits at a bank called Cross River in New Jersey, and X is the app on top. According to Yellow's reporting at the launch, X runs its under money transmitter license in 41 states plus Washington DC with New York and Massachusetts still waiting on approval. And it's for US residents only. So me, a Brit, and loads of you watching from outside America are watching this one from the sidelines for now.

Drop your country in the comments because I'd love to see how many of you could actually open one of these if you wanted to. Right, the 6%. 6% is a genuine figure, but the trick is in what it gets compared to next to 0.83. 6% looks like a miracle. But I always read the small print before I get excited, and I'm sure plenty of you do, too.

I've read a platform's own terms page before and changed what I did because of it. And that habit has paid for itself more than once. So, here's what X's own rates page say. On the free tier and X's cheapest paid tier, the standard rate is 4%. To get to six, you even need one of the higher subscription tiers or at least $1,000 of qualifying deposits landing inside a rolling 34-day window.

And it has to be a proper direct deposit like a paycheck or a Xcreator payout. The rate is variable. and in ex's own words, subject to change at any time. And if you live in New York, you get no interest on it at all. And here's that change I promised you. In a notice dated on the 30th of October 2026, X told account holders that from the 1st of December 2026, the 6% only applies to the first $150,000 and everything above that earns four.

So within a few months of the launch, the headline number already has a ceiling on it. 4% at the top slice is still miles ahead of the average bank to be fair, but it shows you something important. The number in the headline is set by the company and the company can move it. So, what do you reckon? Is 6% with strings attached worth rearranging your paycheck for?

Let me know in the comments because I genuinely read them. And this is the point where a shiny savings app turns into a weapon aimed at the banks. Ask yourself why your bank pays you so little because it gets away with it. Moving banks is a proper fact. New card, new direct debits, relinking every bill, a whole Saturday afternoon on hold.

Your bank knows that and it prices it in. The people in suits even have a word for your deposits. They call them sticky. I move money around the world constantly for work back and forth to America and Asia and a normal international transfer still takes me about 3 days. 3 days in 2026.

That slowness is exactly what keeps money sticky. Now imagine you're Musk and your app is sitting on hundreds of millions of phones already. Musk himself said X averages around 600 million monthly users. No high street branches, no cashiers, no fancy lobby to heat. When your running costs drop through the floor, you can hand more of the differences back to the customer.

And that's a whole move. Must takes sticky money and makes it slippery. And we've already seen what slippery money does to a bank.

Silicon Valley Bank lined up to make sure that they can get their money. There's about 35 to 40 people out here right now.

In March 2023, Silicon Valley bank customers started pulling their money out. A lot of them straight from their phones. According to the regulators own figures, around $42 billion left that bank in a single day on the 9th of March, and around 100 billion more was lined up to go the next morning. The bank never opened its doors as normal again. That's what happens when money can move as fast as a rumor.

Now, X Money is one app and nobody is running anywhere, but it's the direction that matters. So, do this for me. Open your own banking app, find your savings rate, and pop it in the comment. I want to see the spread because I reckon a lot of you are going to be amazed at what you've been accepted. And this is the bit that reaches past the banks and into your street.

A bank takes in deposits and lends them back out. That's the whole business. the mortgage on the house down the road, the loan that keeps their local builder going, the overdraft for the corner shop, all of it is funded by deposits that are supposed to sit still. If deposits drain out of smaller banks and into big apps, those banks have less to lend. That's simply how the plumbing works. There's no alarm that goes off when it starts.

It just gets a little bit harder to borrow, one branch at a time. So why is Washington suddenly so interested in your savings account? On the 14th of April 2026, months before the public launch, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Elon Musk with more than a dozen questions and gave him until the 21st of April to answer. She warned that the stability of the financial system may be at risk. And whatever you think of Warren, two of her points are worth slowing down for.

The first one is the bank. Warren called Cross River a repeat offender. Strong words. So, I went past the headlines and pulled the FDI's own paperwork because I want you [snorts] working from the documents, not what anyone says about them. On the 28th of March 2018, the FDIC announced consent orders against Cross River Bank and a partner firm over unfair and deceptive practices tied to a consumer loan program.

Cross River got a civil money penalty of $641,750 and $20 million was put aside to pay customers back. Then on the 8th of March 2023, the FDIC issued another consent order, this time over what it called unsafe or unsound practices in the bank's fair lending compliance. The bank neither admitted nor denied it, and the order said Cross River needed the FDIC's written sign off before taking on new third-party partners or new credit products. This isn't somebody's hot take on X guys. It's a regulator's own paperwork.

And to be fair to Cross River, plenty of big household name banks have had run-ins with regulators over the years. But it shows you exactly why the questions are getting asked. The second point is the rules. Warren says this law passed in 2025. The Genius Act had what she called a suspicious carve out that could let a private company like X issue its own stable coin without some of the guardrails a bank would face.

And she asked M directly whether X plans to. According to Yellow, at launch, the company still hadn't answered. Hold that thought because it comes straight back when we get to crypto. Which brings me to the one question before you get excited about any rate, any app, any coin. Ask this.

Who actually holds my money and who can freeze it? Because the app is not the bank. With X money, the deposits sit across river. FDIC insurance is there for that bank going under. It's built to cover the bank and the company in the middle is a different thing entirely.

And XMoney's own help pages say your account may be temporarily locked if they spot unusual activity. And when an account is closed, funds may be held to deal with legal or regulatory obligations. And if that sounds like theory, look at what happened in 2024 with a company called Signups. It sat in the middle between savings apps like Yotter and the banks actually holding the money. When it collapsed, thousands of people were locked out of their savings from May 2024, some of them for 6 months and more.

A courtappointed trustee found up to $96 million of customer money unaccounted for. And the FDIC said its insurance fund doesn't cover the failure of a non-banklike signapse. Insured is one thing. Reachable when you need it is another. I've been on the end of this question myself, and I'm sure a lot of you have, too.

Early on, my bank stopped my deposits into crypto until they'd had a chat with me about the risks, my money, my decision, and somebody else had their hand on the switch. I've had a transfer held for a full week until I explained where the money came from. And I've had a broker drag its feet on a payout for ages before it finally landed. It all came good in the end, but every one of those was a really clear lesson in who actually holds the money. And this is exactly why it matters so much for us as crypto holders because it's the same question.

If your coins sit on an exchange, the exchange holds them. If you hold your own keys, you hold them. That's the whole question. And it's worth knowing the answer for every single thing you own before anyone, Musk included, asks you to move it. Now, Musk and crypto have history and it's been a roller coaster.

So, let's go through what's actually documented. On the 4th of February, 2021, he posted that Dogecoin is the people's crypto. We have invested an aggregate $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, the company says, under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets from time to time or longer term. Moreover, we expected to begin accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future.

Four days later, on the 8th of February 2021, a Tesla filing revealed it put $1.5 billion into Bitcoin and said it expected to start accepting it as payment.

Oh, so it's a hustle.

Yeah, it's a hustle.

I didn't say that, man. Father, everybody, it's a hustle. Then in May 2021, he hosted Saturday Night Live, played a so-called financial expert who calls himself the Doge Father. And in the sketch, he agreed it's a hustle. It was a comedy sketch, but the whole crypto world was watching that night.

4 days after that, on the 12th of May, 2021, he posted that Tesla had suspended car purchases using Bitcoin, pointing to the fossil fuels burned in its mining.

First, Tesla dumped the majority of its Bitcoin holdings. to the second quarter earnings report. The electric car maker said it converted 75% of its holdings to fiat currency. That's a pretty big reversal from when it bought $ one.5 billion worth back in 2021, claiming Bitcoin had long-term potential. Still, in the earnings call, Elon Musk said the move shouldn't be taken as quote a verdict on Bitcoin and that the company was growing its pool of cash as it waits for CO lockdowns in China to lift. And in July 2022, Tesla revealed it had sold around 75% of its Bitcoin and Mus said it shouldn't be read as a verdict on Bitcoin.

Back in 2021, when I was starting out, I traded off one of his posts myself and it never went my way. And honestly, I learned more from that one trade than from a dozen winners because it taught me to trade what the chart is actually doing, not what somebody famous just posted. So, when you see the next Musk headline, hold on to that. And here's the twist. After all that history, when X Money launched on the 27th of July 2026, it launched with no crypto at all.

No Bitcoin, no Dogecoin, no stable coin. The man who moved crypto markets with a single post built his money app on a bank and the dollar. So where does XRP come into this because I know that's what a lot of you are thinking. Well, here's what's documented. Here's a rumor and you decide.

Documented. On the 24th of September 2014, Ripple announced that Cross River Bank would integrate Ripple so its clients could send money in real time between the US and Western Europe. And Cross River's boss at the time said they were excited to be among the very first banks in America to deploy it. And Cross River is the bank holding X money deposits. That's two true facts nearly 12 years apart. the rumor.

Some XRP holders read those two facts together and say X money will plug into Ripple's rails or into XRP itself somewhere down the line. Documented again. When I went through them for this video, X's own help pages said nothing about crypto. Nobody at X or Ripple had announced any link between X Money and XRP. And Warren stable coin question was still sitting there unanswered at launch.

So, the bank under the app has a Ripple history. The app itself has no crypto yet. And the stable coin question is wide open. What do you reckon? Coincidence or a door being left open?

Drop the word XRP in the comments if you think this story is only getting started. So, where does all of that leave you and me? Three simple things, and you can do every one of them without asking a billionaire. One, read every headline rate as an advert because that's what it is. It's variable, and as we've just seen, it can change within months.

Two, know where your money actually lives. App or bank, coin or exchange. know who's holding it and who can lock it. Three, let this be the nudge that finally gets you moving. The average American savings rate was 0.38% in October 2026. And even X Money's no strings rate was four.

That gap tells you there's money being left on the table. And plenty of plain online savings account pay well above the average. Shop around, read the terms page, and if you're unsure, speak to a qualified professional. Me personally, any idol trading cash I've got sits somewhere earning interest because cash earning nothing is cash working for somebody else. And here's what I really want you to take away.

For 40 years, the deal with your bank was simple and quiet. You put a bit away every month. You never switch. And the bank quietly banks on you never looking. That tiny rate was a choice, guys.

It's how the whole thing makes money. The product was never really your money. It was your patience. And the second someone with 600 million users pointed it out, everybody got nervous. The banks, the politicians, the lot.

That tells you everything. So, so you've got two paths. One path, you let the headline wash over you. Leave everything exactly where it's always been and keep accepting the scraps. Path two, you take 10 minutes, look at the actual numbers.

Find out who actually holds every pound, every dollar, and every coin you own. and make your money pull its weight for you the way you pull yours for it. And if this one opened your eyes, the next video is going to do the same for your crypto because I'm going to walk you through exactly who's holding what and where the money's really sitting. Make sure you're subscribed so it lands in front of you. And if you want to go deeper on stuff like this, who holds your money and how to make it work, our research team digs into it every single week and you can grab a free 15minute chat with them. It's the first link under this video.

It's built for people holding $50,000 or more in crypto. And if that's not you yet, no stress at all. Keep watching. These go up every day. Now, none of this is financial advice, guys.

It's just me, a coffee, and a lot of research. Crypto carries risk, and what's happened before is no guarantee of what happens next. Your keys stay with you, and the team never needs them. Thanks for watching, guys. Keep your head, stack with purpose, and I'll keep you posted.

[music]

Hey, hey, hey. [music]