X.com

X.com was an online bank founded by Elon Musk in November 1999. In March 2000, X.com merged with Confinity Inc., a software company based in Silicon Valley. Confinity had developed and was operating an e-commerce payment system called PayPal. Musk was attracted to Confinity because of its easy payment system. The merged company changed its name to PayPal. Musk sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2001, which made Musk a technology billionaire.[1]

Not to be confused with X-COM or X.Org.
X.COM
OwnerElon Musk
URLx.com
LaunchedNovember 1999 (1999-11)
Current statusMerged March 2000 with Confinity

Business model

X.com was one of the world's first online banks, and deposits were insured by the FDIC.[2] The company was initially funded by Elon Musk and his business mentor Greg Kouri, who went on to fund Musk's later ventures, Tesla and his startup, SpaceX.[3]

History

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 email and the web.

In October 2000 Musk was replaced by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Confinity. In June 2001, X.com was renamed PayPal.[4]

On 5 July 2017, Musk repurchased the domain name X.com from PayPal.[5][6] He explained later that he bought the website because "it has great sentimental value".[7]

On 14 July 2017, X.com was launched again, consisting of a blank white page with one "x" in the top left corner,[8] and a custom error page displaying a "y".[9][10] The site displays this way due to having nothing in its source code except the single letter "x". In December, X.com redirected visitors to The Boring Company's website, which Musk also owns. This was done in order to advertise a hat sale.[10]

X.com no longer redirects to The Boring Company, having reverted to the previous state of the blank page with one "x" in the top left corner. Subpages redirect to a blank page with a "y" in the same corner.

See also

References
  1. Doeden, Matt (2015). SpaceX and Tesla Motors Engineer Elon Musk. Lerner Publications. p. 13. 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. Hull, Dana (2012-08-13). "Greg Kouri, early investor in PayPal, dies in New York". Mercury News.
  4. Publishing, BusinessNews (2016-07-20). Summary: Elon Musk: Review and Analysis of Vance's Book. Business Book Summaries. ISBN 9782511040959.
  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. Musk, Elon (10 Jul 2017). "Thanks PayPal for allowing me to buy back http://X.com ! No plans right now, but it has great sentimental value to me". @elonmusk. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
  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.
  10. Iles, James (Dec 11, 2017). "Elon Musk Finally Puts X.com to Some Use". NamePros. Retrieved 2018-01-02.

Official website

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