X is adding X Money, moving closer to an everything app that handles payments alongside social media. In Episode 033, Luke Tatum, Nicky P and Rob Brayton look at what happens when one company holds your money, your messages and your location, using China's WeChat as a working example, and why convenience has costs that aren't measured in dollars. They close with why a consistent approach to money beats the latest convenience tool.
“The road to hell is paved with convenience”
X is moving closer to becoming an everything app, adding X Money to the platform. Whether you like Elon Musk or not isn't really the question. The question is what happens when one company knows your payments, your opinions and your location all at once.
What We Covered
All your data in one place. Rob's concern is what one subpoena can reach when everything sits in one place, and what happens to your business and your life if that one account gets shut down overnight. Anyone can be pressured, no matter who runs the company.
WeChat and Tencent. WeChat, run by China's Tencent, has more than a billion users and handles payments, messaging and social media in one app. I explain how that gives easy access to what most people in China are doing, which is a real problem if you disagree with the government.
Golden shares. Rob looked it up: rather than owning a majority, the Chinese government holds small golden shares of about 1% in key subsidiaries, with board seats that let it shape decisions. That can be more influence than a large shareholder gets. Nicky ties this back to the US government taking a stake in Intel.
“Sometimes convenience has a cost, and that cost isn’t just a dollar value.”
Social credit scores. A single everything app also makes something like a social credit score possible. We're not fear-mongering. It's a working feature of the WeChat model.
What your card statement says about you. Rob points out how much is tracked already. The year-end summary of your spending by category feels helpful, but it shows how much data sits on the back end, and who gets to see it is a fair question.
Why privacy matters. Anyone who has paid cash at a roadside stand knows the value of not having to explain what you're buying. The ability to disconnect is worth holding onto.
“X Money does not change the nature of how you have money.”
Visa and a 6% savings rate. X Money is reportedly partnering with Visa and offering a 6% savings rate. Will it all materialize? We'll see. Either way, it's not good to have that much consolidated in one place, and I'd say the same about Amazon or anyone else.
Could competition help? Nicky sees some upside. More competition in money, including a possible stablecoin, could be good in the short term. The more global and consolidated anything becomes, though, the more dangerous it gets.
What problem is being solved? Rob asks what X Money is solving for: convenience. Our approach solves a different problem everyone has, which is getting more of your money working for you in a place you own and control.
Key Takeaway
Convenience is nice, but the road to hell is paved with it. X Money doesn't change the nature of money. A consistent, informed approach to money will beat the latest convenience tool every time. At Perfect Spiral Capital, that approach is owning the banking function yourself with properly designed whole life insurance instead of outsourcing it to a tech platform.
Key Moments
[2:00] All Your Data in One Place
[5:00] WeChat and Tencent
[8:00] Government Stakes in Private Companies
[9:00] Golden Shares
[11:00] Social Credit Scores
[12:00] What Your Card Statement Says About You
[15:00] Visa and a 6% Savings Rate
[17:00] Could Competition Help?
[20:00] Strategy Beats Convenience
[22:00] What Problem Is Being Solved?
“People have good ideas, they have bad ideas.”
Related Episodes
Episode 002: Visa, MasterCard, and the Death of Financial Freedom: When Private Companies Decide Your Morality
Episode 001: Breaking Down Trump's Crypto Regulation Bills: What The GENIUS, Clarity, and CBDC Acts Actually Mean
Episode 038: SoFi's Stablecoin, the Genius Act, and the Back-Door Plan to Keep the Dollar Alive
Want the full conversation, including Rob on government golden shares? Listen to the full episode and grab the free toolkit at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast.
FAQ
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X Money is a payments and banking feature built into X, Elon Musk's social media platform. At the time of Episode 033, it was reported to be partnering with Visa and offering a 6% savings rate in early access. It's part of a push to make X an everything app.
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An everything app combines social media, messaging, payments and other services in one place. China's WeChat is the best-known example, with more than a billion users. Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton's concern is how much data that puts in one company's hands.
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A golden share is a small ownership stake that comes with special rights, like a board seat or a veto. Rob Brayton explains that China's government holds golden shares of about 1% in key subsidiaries of companies like Tencent, which gives it influence over decisions without owning a majority.
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Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton suggest owning the banking function in your own life instead of outsourcing it. At Perfect Spiral Capital, they do that with properly designed whole life insurance, where cash value grows on a contractually guaranteed basis and you can typically borrow against it on your own terms.
Show full transcript
Between The Lies: Episode 033 Transcript
Nicky P: Always trust a man will come through on his worst ideas while I waffle on his beneficence. Mr. Elon is moving ever closer to his one app to rule them all. Remember when we thought Facebook was the embodiment of the movie? The circle. Welcome to the Between The Lies Podcast, your weekly lesson on how to approach an uncertain world with positivity and balance.
I'm Nicky P here with my good friends and money brains, Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital, as they help us navigate the snares and pitfalls in a world of. Trust me bro. Economics. Stick around until the end of the video for their free toolkit and be sure to like and subscribe if you enjoy.
The Everything App [0:00]
Nicky P: Gentlemen, what backdoor to socialism have you been concerned about lately?
X Money [0:00]
Luke Tatum: Well, gosh, so we're talking about the Everything app, the, or Elon Musk's, everything App X. So he is apparently moving closer and closer to implementing, X Pay or X payments, X money. Which is one more way to have X be the app that handles everything in your life, which is to say having a very, very comprehensive window into your entire pattern of behavior, right?
Social media apps have track things like location for a long time, but the more and more and more data that a single. Data processor a single entity has on you, the more dangerous that becomes for obvious reasons. And so we're perhaps a approaching a point in time where this becomes like the way to send money, like a Zelle or, you know, cash app, things like that.
But also it's social media and knows everything that you think about every major topic and also knows where your location is all the time, and also, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I thought it would be kind of a fruitful conversation. I've got some parallels I wanna draw and whatnot, but, how do you guys feel about it, Rob?
All Your Data in One Place [2:00]
Rob Brayton: Yeah, I think anytime that you have that much data stored together in one space, it's kind of concerning, right? Where if you have, because what does it take? Some sort of a government subpoena or something like that, and they want all the information turned over for a given person or a group of persons, right?
And it ends up in a really bad spot. Or you get a situation where like, look at all the stuff that's going on with Palantir. They're just willingly giving it over. So, I mean, we. I think in America we would prefer, and we tend to want our privacy, or at least that's the illusion that, that most people have, but they willingly give up all the time.
Even us included at some level. So it's not like we're saying we're better than everybody else that way, but there's a difference when everything is combined in one space and like, if that's how you operate, that's how you conduct a business. That's how you. Interact with others. Well, that also means that one area can be shut down effectively, overnight, and now you're stuck and you can't do anything.
So I think that's my bigger concern with it is, regardless of the fact that, you know, Elon seems to be more, and not necessarily tied to the government, but I mean, does that really matter? I mean, it really doesn't. Anybody can be turned, so to speak that way, so,
Luke Tatum: Right, right. What about DOGE and all that, right?
Rob Brayton: Yeah. I mean,
The Circle [3:00]
Nicky P: So, so most of my knowledge people, I'm not a, an expert per se on, Money and all that stuff. I just listen to these guys that happens to steer me. Right? What I am an expert on is science fiction, you know, and, and horror movies and, a classic one God, we could have swore five years ago, this was literally, you know, telling us, for telling us what, the CIA had planned for Facebook, but.
You know, as good as Elon may sound on some things, man, he gets super comy at others. There was this movie called The Circle. I'm not sure who the seen it. My boys here have not. And the premise behind the circle is that, well, you already have these giant social media companies in particular. They're focused on one.
Why are we so concerned about going out and getting our voter rolls? You know, getting people registered to vote when they're already ready. They're already registered in this one website. We just let the voting happen here and then before you know it, like your entire government's taking place in a social media app, and there is no bonafide difference between your corporate and your government sector.
They're just kind of all in this one place. We all know how well that works. If you paid any attention to WeChat and China, that's I think we're, Luke wants to tell us a little bit more about, but what I can tell you is I'm pretty sure that the CIA wouldn't even have approved this movie because the ending was so on the nose that like privacy is just bad and that all human beings would be better if everything we did was under constant scrutiny by everybody that I don't even think they would've approved it.
I think, look guys. I know that's what we really want, but we can't give away the whole game.
WeChat and Tencent [5:00]
Luke Tatum: Right. I, you know, that's a movie that perhaps I should go see. I mean, it sounds like I should, and I say go see as though it's in theaters, but you know what I mean, like watch it on some kind of platform. But yeah, you know, you bring up WeChat and, and we already have kind of a functional example out there of.
Of how this sort of thing plays out, where everything kind of filters through this one app. Now, WeChat has about a billion users. Okay? It's a, you know, primarily Chinese thing. And this is where we get into territory that's emotionally charged for a lot of people, right? As soon as you say China, a lot of people are gonna say, you know, they're gonna jump to conclusions or what have you.
The facts with WeChat are. Billion plus users. They have integrated payments, they have location data. They have, you know, social media, they have, you know, it's where everybody posts everything. It's how you coordinate your lunch plans with your friends, right? And all of that data in WeChat is unencrypted.
If you send money, the payment processing is encrypted, but all of the other stuff is available for the parent company. Tencent. To look at. Tencent is a huge, you know, multi-billion dollar conglomerate that's based in China, and they primarily invest in video game companies, and that's a whole thing. I'm, you know, that's my kind of space.
So I know the name Tencent very well, even outside of this context, but WeChat, you know, in a slightly convoluted way, provides easily referenceable access. To all of the information about most people in China, right? Everything that they are doing. And so the maybe obvious, maybe not obvious downside to that is if you are politically dissident in any way is real easy to figure out what you're doing and what you know how to handle you.
From like law enforcement's perspective, which is maybe not a good thing, you know, if you, if you, if you're not a fan of the government and what they're doing there.
Government Stakes in Private Companies [8:00]
Nicky P: So I wanna pull apart like another parallel that we haven't actually brought up yet is one of the reasons it's so easy for that to work over there is because.
What is, who owns 15% of Tencent, I believe is the actual number.
Luke Tatum: Mm, go ahead.
Nicky P: The government, you
Luke Tatum: Tell me the government. Yep.
Nicky P: The communist party owns 15% of Tencent, so they are officially a shareholding owner of all of that information. [Editor's note: The Chinese government isn't a 15% owner of Tencent. Government-backed funds have taken small "golden share" stakes, about 1%, in some Tencent subsidiaries, as Rob describes below.]
Luke Tatum: Right
Nicky P: Now, what other government just gotten, you know, into the investing in our own companies?
Situation.
Luke Tatum: Oh, could it possibly be Intel Corporation and the United States government that we have talked about multiple times on this very podcast?
Nicky P: So I'm just saying, we let Elon set this up. And how quickly does Trump buying ownership stock using the ity, the American governments, you know, piggy bank?
Yeah. Oh, well, we own all this information too.
Golden Shares [9:00]
Rob Brayton: It's pretty interesting. So I did a quick search on it just because I think this is a really valid point to bring in a situation like this. Nick, and I think you referenced some of the other stuff that was brought up before, with other episodes we've done talking about government ownership shares.
Right. So the Chinese government does not hold us like a majority equity stake or anything, but they have these quote unquote golden shares and it's like 1% in key subsidiaries board seats. It allows 'em to influence, directly influence corporate decisions, content regulation, and the overall strategic direction of the company.
So how is that any different than being a even a large minority shareholder in the company? It's actually. More beneficial for you on that, on that front. So
Control Without Full Ownership [9:00]
Luke Tatum: It's like trying to say like, if you, if you're trying to downplay this, for some reason it's like trying to say that the government doesn't actually control the railways, you know, the railroad system because, well, they don't own every share of stock or whatever, you know, or they don't, they don't control the Federal Reserve because the Federal Reserve is a private institution.
Right. But it's a private institution that you have the president select the. The chair for, so how, you know, I, that's a little weird. I don't know, like the federal government doesn't tell, you know, the local mom and pop grocery store who has to run their store. You know, like, I mean, I, there's some kind of, there's some kind of different thing happening here.
Maybe it's worth paying attention to that I, you know, it's just so weird the way that these arguments tend to go, but the WeChat thing, you know, another thing this enables, and X payments, X money could potentially enable, you know, if it becomes an everything app for the United States. Is the idea of a social credit score.
Social Credit Scores [11:00]
Luke Tatum: Right? And so don't click off the video, just, you know, we're not just fear mongering for no reason here, right? This is a thing with WeChat and you know, it's like it's an intelligence system. It's a way to kind of know how you know good of a citizen, someone is. And you know, is it worth kind of paying more attention or less attention to this person?
Are they locked in, you know. With the whatever, toeing the party line for their guys, you know, keeping the illusion of a free democracy, you know, going, or are they, you know, are they a dissident again, to use the same word as before?
Nicky P: Well, Luke, you don't even need to go so far as to China to see that happening because, some of our credit card companies over here have already started implementing, you know.
Policies that track your green movement, like they'll pay attention to what you're spending money on, and you actually do get a score based on how green you are being. Now granted, as far as I know, I haven't heard of anything happening with that data yet. You know, it's only a matter of time before someone finds something that they can't do with it.
You know? Well, you've shopped at Home Depot too much this week, so we gotta we gotta curtail that. You're building your carbon footprint too big. You know? And I think, I think the initial, I think the initial idea is just to try and shame people by, like letting them see. You know, counting it for of them so that they can't look away kind of thing.
But it's a hop, skip and a jump before finding some way of weaponizing that.
What Your Card Statement Says About You [12:00]
Rob Brayton: Yeah, I, it's really interesting too, 'cause it just think about here's an innocuous way that this stuff gets tracked and it's like, you get these annual statements or they'll break it all down for you, right. On a credit card statement of some sort.
And they tell you all these different categories, how you're spending money, et cetera. Well. Yeah, that, that's all nice and it feels fine because they're helping you, but what's that really saying? How much tracking is actually taking place on the backend? You know, and then who gets it? Who get, who has access to that data?
And what does it get used for, you know, on the, for the greater good of these companies and how they interact with the government. They share that, that those statistics and different things at a, at a high level, in some cases, maybe not individually, but it does get shared and used and and so forth. But when a overall, when we think about a situation like this, particularly with social credit and, and some of these areas, it's not a scenario that benefits us.
Like what benefit person? Almost all cases, there is no benefit to you or I. It's about control and controlling what you can and can't do versus, you know, being, have, having full autonomy and full freedom, which is very much something that I think most of us, and hopefully those who are watching this are advocates for.
You know, we want that freedom. We want the ability to do that.
Nicky P: But boys, but boys, look, if you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing, what do you care about? What people see?
Luke Tatum: Yeah. Right. Privacy is only for criminals and all that. Right. You know, it's
Nicky P: Been trying that one on Bitcoin for years, right?
Why Privacy Matters [14:00]
Luke Tatum: Absolutely. Absolutely. Why do you want have a pipe? Why could you possibly want that? It's, you know, it. Anybody who's ever used cash for anything, I think can appreciate that. It's kind of nice, right? That you don't have to like, explain to somebody what you're doing. You know? Maybe I wanna buy a bushel of something from a local stand, you know, at the end of the road or whatever.
That somebody that grows apples, cool, maybe I wanna buy some apples. Maybe I don't wanna have to connect to the internet because it's the middle of nowhere to process a payment. You know what I'm saying? We kind of have this dual expectation, I feel like, of privacy, but also the most convenience all the time in every place.
And like we live in the middle of nowhere, you know, like I don't even have a good cell phone signal at my house and I like it that way. You know what I mean? Am I on the internet right now streaming? Yeah, you bet. But. The ability to disconnect is, you know, I'd say that's a precious, right, that we should try to hold onto.
Visa and a 6% Savings Rate [15:00]
Luke Tatum: So, and this goes and we can go so far with this topic. I feel like this could easily be a very, very long episode. You know, talk about cashless society and all those sorts of things just as easily as any of the rest of it. But, you know, the fact remains, I guess, that X money, you know, they're looking at a partnership with Visa.
They're looking at, you know, 6% savings rate account, like being able to put money on deposit so that you can just earn money on your money, you know, will this materialize? Of course that remains to be seen. You know, Elon talks about his projects being imminently released for five years before anything happens with him, and that's kind of routine, you know what I mean?
But. You know, whether you like Elon Musk or not, I guess is kind of my point here. It doesn't matter. It's not good to have that much in one, you know, consolidated place like Amazon and stuff like that is bad enough because it's like people order all of their medications and all of their, you know, household goods on repeat.
You know, you have subscriptions for all these products, but. At least some of that is fairly innocuous, you know? Right. Like, I don't necessarily care that Amazon knows that I take an antihistamine in the morning, you know what I'm saying? But the, this slippery slope, you know, certainly exists and, and we have a lot that we could worry about here.
I think we've, out done a good job of outlining that. Episode today,
Could Competition Help? [17:00]
Nicky P: So I'll ask the question. We've harped a lot on the, negatives into this. Now, I'm, I will say that it's not without at least some front end positives because some of the things I anticipate will probably end up happening will definitely be in the way of, in the realm of competition and.
Anytime we're talking competition in the world of finance, in the world of, you know, monies, so to speak, you know, the ability to launch a stable coin from like that particular place to add competition to the global currency mix always seems like, wow, that's a great way to pull a lot of the world in.
And kinda help stabilize some of the junk that's going on as far as global currency goes. Now, to me that sounds like a good thing, certainly on the short term, if not the long term. But once again, the more of anything that is, you know, global in nature, the more dangerous it can be. So it's like, you know, a little short term goodness for some long term, but maybe really bad.
The Road to Hell Is Paved With Convenience [18:00]
Luke Tatum: Yeah, I mean, you know, again, it's like if Amazon, I'll just go back to that example. You know, if Amazon was to suddenly offer significantly more in the way of, you know, money services and those sorts of things, and, and everyone was using the same platform and all of this was being consolidated in one place, like I'd be just as suspicious of Bezos.
Or whoever as I would be of Elon Musk or someone else. Do I like convenience? Like Yeah, you bet I do. You know, but the road to hell is paved with convenience, you know, and good intention. Right. And so like the ease at which you can manage certain things or do certain things, I mean, it's, in some way it mirrors the AI conversation, right?
It's like. Cool. It's easier for me to find information and articles online because of AI, but do I want all of these data centers and all of this electric costs and all, you know, all of these other negative things to happen. Do I want only AI companies to be growing right now? Right. To be a larger and larger and larger, you know, just.
Linchpin piece of the S&P 500 to where as soon as AI has a bad day, the whole global financial system comes crashing down. Right. Do I want that? No, I don't. I want that. So you kind of have to take a measured approach when this sort of thing and, You know, I have no intention to use X money. I guess I should just say that too.
Like, I have no desire for that. I'm, I already have ways to send money to people. You know, one of them may be PayPal, but I'm, you know, still, okay. There are other ways to do it. I'm about to wire some money to buy a car. You know what I'm saying? It's like there are other ways to handle these things already, so.
Strategy Beats Convenience [20:00]
Luke Tatum: Where does that leave us though? I think, you know, to be the scrooge of the situation and in some sense, and just say all you darn kids with your darn technology, you know, it's like we have a very, very fruitful method of. Accumulating capital accumulating funds that we use. I mean, it's our strategy.
That's what we're espousing episode after episode. And it has nothing to do with this, you know, this is way, way older than the IRS, what we're talking about. And so, you know, a strategy, a consistent informed approach to money is going to win out over the latest convenience tool, every single time.
You know, like this doesn't change the nature of money. X money does not change the nature of how you have money. It just makes it convenient, right? And so. In some ways what we do is slightly inconvenient, but that's not the point. The point is that, you know, the long-term benefit far exceeds any minor inconvenience you might have with it.
I don't know, Rob, I mean, where do you wanna kind of close things out here?
What Problem Is Being Solved? [22:00]
Rob Brayton: Just kind of thinking about that on that topic. Luke is so what problem is being solved for? Right. So in this case, With X, you know, we're trying, he's trying to solve for convenience. And that's really what it boils down to, is convenience for people because everything's in one place, but sometimes convenience has a cost, and that cost isn't just a dollar value.
It's a lot of other things. And I think that's really what we're kind of highlighting in this episode so far. But one of the other things to think about is everyone has problems for their money. There's a fundamental problem in that. You can either spend it and it's gone forever, or you can try to save it and delay the spending and, and hope to have it grow.
And with the strategies that, that we employ, what we're looking to do is take a large volume or use a large volume of your money so that it's always working for you instead of it. Only 10% is working for you. What we want to teach people and what we help people to do is get a larger volume of money working for them consistently in a place that's private, in a place that they have the capacity to utilize, grow, and continue to build that capital system.
And then they can go do whatever they want with it. You can still go do all the investing, do all the stuff, and that, that's really what we're, what we're solving for, is we're actually solving for a money problem that everyone has. Businesses have it. We have it. It doesn't matter who you are, but how you go about solving that problem is important and, and what that, what we're solving for is taking, owning that banking function instead of outsourcing it to Elon or something like that.
Right? So that, that's really what we're doing in this, in this particular case, is to take ownership of.
Nicky P: Well, nevermind how many my friends had their X accounts hacked over the past week, and good lord, if that was connected to their bank account, what kind of shenanigans that could ensue.
Luke Tatum: You know, I, gosh.
And, and we didn't even get into Grok and all this other stuff. Like, I mean, there people are already trusting so much to X, you know, and it's just insane. I mean, I'm on a Starlink internet service right now, you know, so like lest I be called a hypocrite. I am sitting here using it to communicate with the world.
But, it is, that is also a little different. You know, and, and maybe we'll just kind of leave it there. Everyone has critical thinking skills and can, you know, pick apart these nuances. I feel like,
Good Ideas and Bad Ideas [24:00]
Nicky P: I actually think that's, it's an important point to note is that like, and, and I kind of mentioned that like I don't have some type of ill will against Elon.
I don't think he's the second coming of Christ though either like. People have good ideas, they have bad ideas. People are good at doing some things, and sometimes, like they manage to pull off really crappy ideas at large scale. You know, maybe Elon is gonna save civilization by bringing us out to Mars.
I don't know. But I think that I, if certainly, at least in our camp, it shows that we're willing to throw the swords or the swords need thrown. You know, we're not just. At like, you know, our enemies on the left, our enemies on the right. Even the people that, you know, sometimes align with us, Hey, like, you have a bad idea.
You have a bad idea. And I think that's an important thing for all of us to, you know, to pay attention to.
Outro and Free Toolkit [25:00]
Luke Tatum: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, if you, if any of this. Even remotely inspired you. You know, if you're thinking, man, it, wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have to rely on Tech Bros and trust me bro, economics and all this stuff to manage my money, right?
What if I could take a little bit of that back? What if I could manage some of that? You know, the person who controls the banking system, the banking function in your life stands to benefit enormously from doing that. It's just that we're all outsourcing it to other people. So maybe don't, maybe don't outsource it if you want it.
Dig into that and see immediate real benefits for you and your family and your, you know, future generations and all of this. Like that's what this is all about. And we have an excellent toolkit to get you started with that. So head on over to perfectspiralcapital.com/podcast. Check out our free toolkit.
It's a whole bunch of stuff. Join our community and you'll get a free copy of my book and everything else. So let, you know, we'll see you over there and hopefully we'll also see you in the next episode. One last note. Be sure to check out Rob's separate YouTube channel at Rob Brayton psc, where he has lots of great content digging into some of these ideas in detail just right here on YouTube.
And with that being said, y'all, thanks so much for watching. We'll.
