- X appointed Benji Taylor, formerly Aave Labs CPO and Base design lead, as Design Lead.
- Taylor founded Los Feliz Engineering, acquired by Aave Labs in 2023.
- The hire has fueled speculation that X Money may include crypto features.
- X Money entered limited beta in March and expects early public access in April.
X has appointed Benji Taylor, formerly Chief Product Officer at Aave Labs and design lead at Coinbase’s Base network, as its new head of design, a move that has quickly stoked speculation about whether the platform’s forthcoming X Money payment product will incorporate cryptocurrency functionality.
Taylor’s background cuts through the center of DeFi and Layer 2 infrastructure. He founded Los Feliz Engineering, which Aave Labs acquired in 2023, subsequently rising to CPO at the lending protocol.
He then joined Coinbase’s Base network in October 2024, where he oversaw design for roughly six months. Shortly after departing, he announced he was “honoured to be joining X to lead design,” a post that drew a public welcome from CEO Elon Musk.
X Head of Product Nikita Bier confirmed the hire to his almost-a-million followers on X, noting that Taylor had been actively courted for approximately six months. The stated goal is to build what Bier called the best design team in the world. Bier added that he had previously crossed paths with Taylor and regarded him as an exceptional talent.
X Money Moves Toward a Public Debut
The appointment lands as X Money, the platform’s peer-to-peer payments product, accelerates toward a broader rollout. The feature entered a limited “X Alpha” testing phase in early March, with a public launch targeted for April, according to Elon Musk.
Actor and entrepreneur William Shatner, among those in the closed beta, shared screenshots of the app interface publicly this week, offering the clearest visual preview of the product to date.
Whether X Money will support crypto transactions at launch remains an open question. X has made no formal disclosure on digital asset integration, and the April rollout may initially concentrate on conventional fiat transfers. Regulatory filings, money-transmission licensing, and infrastructure details will be the real signals investors should watch to assess how far X intends to push into digital assets.
The crypto community has already drawn its own lines. Analyst Willy Woo and others have cited Taylor’s DeFi history as circumstantial evidence that crypto payments are embedded somewhere in X’s product roadmap. That remains speculation for now. What is clear is that X is moving quickly, on both product development and design talent, ahead of what may be its most consequential consumer finance launch yet.
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