X launches “X Numbers” to receive messages and calls without a number

A telephone number without a telephone operator. X has started the deployment of The announcement came from the @chat account, dedicated to the social network's messaging.

Behind this convenience lies the addressing layer that Elon Musk needs to connect payments to his network. On the way to “the famous super-app”?

Key Points

X deploys X Numbers, private and optional codes allowing you to receive messages and calls outside of mutual relationships

These identifiers complement X Chat, the encrypted messaging that replaces DMs and works without a phone number

The “Bitcoin-like encryption” praised by Elon Musk has been corrected by cryptographers: Bitcoin signs and chops, it does not encrypt

An addressable identifier conditions X Money, whose subsidiary X Payments LLC accumulates money transmitter licenses in the United States

X Numbers: Contact someone without giving them their number

The principle is in one line. Each user can generate an X Number, communicate it to whomever they wish, then directly receive messages and calls from the people who hold it. The usual filter disappears: until now, a message sent by an account that you do not follow landed in a secondary box that almost no one opens.

These codes complement X Chat, the encrypted messaging system supposed to replace the old DMs. The product offers ephemeral messages, sending files of all types, audio and video calls, as well as access from a computer via a four-digit code. Above all, it works without a telephone number, which avoids having to deliver your mobile line to be reachable.

Elon Musk had praised “Bitcoin-type encryption” for this project. The formula has raised eyebrows among cryptographers, and for good reason: Bitcoin does not encrypt anything. The protocol signs transactions using elliptic curves and hashes its blocks in SHA-256, on a public ledger by construction.

Protecting the privacy of a conversation and ensuring the integrity of a blockchain are two separate problems, even though both draw from the same mathematical toolbox. Surely a semantic shortcut from the big boss who is already thinking about the next step…

From ID to wallet: X Money and crypto in ambush

Because to send money to someone, you must first be able to address it. This is exactly the function that a private code attached to an account fulfills, and it is the link that WeChat exploited for ten years in China to transform messaging into a domestic payment network.

X Money has been progressing on this trajectory since the announcement of Visa as the first partner of the offer, at the beginning of 2025. The subsidiary

Elon Musk kept cryptocurrencies away from this first phase, denominated entirely in dollars. The irony is that the crypto industry solved this addressing problem before it: ENS names on Ethereum, Lightning Addresses that look like an email address, or .sol domains all serve to replace an unreadable string of characters with a readable identifier.

The difference concerns ownership. An X Number is assigned by a platform, which can suspend it; a public key belongs to whoever holds the corresponding private key, with no intermediary to revoke it.