X.com source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com

x
Owner Elon Musk
Website x.com
Launched 1999

X.com was an online bank started by Elon Musk in November, 1999 that later became PayPal.[1] It was one of the world's first online banks. Its deposits were insured with FDIC.[2] It had a partnership with Barclays.[3] It was initially funded by Musk and his business mentor Greg Kouri, who went on to fund Musk's later startups Tesla and SpaceX.[4]

In March 2000, X.com merged with Confinity, its fiercest competitor, the new company being called X.com. Musk was its biggest shareholder and was appointed as its CEO. Also started in 1999, Confinity's product PayPal enabled users having Palm Pilots to send money to each other through its infrared ports. Subsequently, PayPal developed to allow users to send money using emails and the web. In September 2000 Musk was replaced by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Confinity. In June 2001, X.com was renamed PayPal.[3]

On July 5, 2017 Musk repurchased the domain name X.com from PayPal.[5][6] On 14 July 2017, Musk announced the "launch of x.com" on Twitter.[7] When the page launched it consisted of a blank white page with one "x" in the top left corner.[8] It also has a custom error page displaying a "y".[9]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Doeden, Matt (2015-03-01). SpaceX and Tesla Motors Engineer Elon Musk. Lerner Publications. ISBN 9781467762809. 
  2. ^ Vance, Ashlee (2015-05-21). Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future. Ebury Publishing. ISBN 9780753550663. 
  3. ^ a b Publishing, BusinessNews (2016-07-20). Summary: Elon Musk: Review and Analysis of Vance's Book. Business Book Summaries. ISBN 9782511040959. 
  4. ^ Hull, Dana (2012-08-13). "Greg Kouri, early investor in PayPal, dies in New York". Mercury News. 
  5. ^ Strange, Adario. "What mysterious plan does Elon Musk have for X.com?". Mashable. Retrieved 11 July 2017. 
  6. ^ Huang, Echo. "Elon Musk just bought x.com, but it probably didn't come cheap". Quartz. Retrieved 11 July 2017. 
  7. ^ Elon Musk [@elonmusk] (14 July 2017). "Excited to announce the launch of x.com ! It's a little verbose right now, but that will be fixed tomorrow." (Tweet). Retrieved 14 July 2017 – via Twitter. 
  8. ^ Maggio, Edoardo. "Elon Musk has launched the 'X.com' website he bought back from PayPal recently". Business Insider. Retrieved 14 July 2017. 
  9. ^ Elon Musk [@elonmusk] (15 July 2017). "y" (Tweet). Archived from the original on 25 September 2017. Retrieved 25 September 2017 – via Twitter.