Google, Twitter revenue could predict the future of crypto

by Arthur · October 24, 2022

As Wall Street investors brace for a slew of Big Tech earnings this week, the cryptocurrency world will have its eyes and ears glued to something a little different. Specifically about Google or Twitterwhich reports earnings on Tuesday (October 25), will provide new insight into how the tech giants and social media powerhouses plan to integrate digital assets and payments into their day-to-day operations.

The same goes for their metaverse and/or Web3 strategies, as they end up involving crypto payments almost by default. And given their high priority in the marketing world these days, investor-focused earnings reports and analyst calls are perhaps more likely to focus on them more than on the somewhat narrower—albeit closer—cryptopayments segment.

I Tawt I Taw a Payments Crypto

However, the opposite is likely true for Twitter, which has a much smaller scope and also stronger focus on crypto payments dating back to its former CEO Jack Dorseynow head of bitcoin-friendly payments firm Block.

Twitter may not be the most significant of this week’s earnings reports, but given the on-again, off-again, currently on-again status of the company’s sale to crypto-friendly Tesla CEO and world’s richest man Elon Musk, it is the one most likely to focus on payments in general and crypto payments in particular. (It’s also least likely to focus on Web3, which Musk has called a “marketing buzzword” on Twitter.)

I’m not suggesting that web3 is real – seems more marketing buzzword than reality right now – just wondering what the future will look like in 10, 20 or 30 years. 2051 sounds crazy futuristic!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 20 December 2021

Back in June, Musk said “money is fundamentally digital at this point and has been for a while. It would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter, so it’s easy to send money back and forth.”

He added that he wanted to turn Twitter into a super social media app based on China’s WeChat — which he said “does everything, like Twitter, plus PayPal, plus a whole bunch of stuff, all rolled into one” — dogecoin- the booster said it requires a “high-trust situation,” where “payments, whether crypto or fiat, can make a lot of sense.”

Twitter’s current leadership has also been pushing crypto payments, revealing on April 22 that it had partnered with payment processor Stripe “to begin offering crypto payments to creators through Stripe so they have more choices in how they get paid,” according to Esther Crawford, Twitter’s. product management for creators.

In May, the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, put in $500 million to back Musk’s Twitter bid, adding another proponent of crypto payments to the buyout proposal.

That means there will likely be more focus on crypto payments in Twitter’s earnings report than from other major tech and social media firms.

Google Pay’s attention

Google began looking into crypto payments back in January, when it formed a blockchain and related technology division shortly after Google Payments and Commerce president Arnold Goldberg, a PayPal veteran, said the company was paying “a lot of attention to crypto.”

Earlier this month, the Google Cloud division teamed up with Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange and crypto payment technology provider Coinbase in a partnership aimed at Web3 developers. In that announcement, Coinbase said it would use Google Cloud to build its platform.

Google Cloud, for its part, said it would “enable select customers, starting with those in the Web3 ecosystem, to pay for its cloud services via select cryptocurrencies” using Coinbase Commerce’s merchant payment tool.