The @X handle on Twitter is so valuable that Elon Musk just took it

Ah, Elon Musk, the patron saint of being unfunny online and letting everyone know about it. After spending the last 10 months turning Twitter into a deteriorating wasteland of Cheech & Chong cannabis ads, Musk recently achieved his lifelong dream of owning a company called X. Not that he did too much work for the rebrand. The son of an Emerald Mine owner got the X logo from one of his fans. Actually, neither had to work too hard. The now-infamous “𝕏” that’s slowly and awkwardly replacing the globally recognized Twitter logo comes from a publicly available font that costs about $30. 𝕏 may be “the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking,” but it’s also a lazy rebrand from a desperate man hemorrhaging money after being forced into buying a website because a joke went too far.

However, despite spending $30 on the company’s logo, Musk still had one more change to make. The company’s X handle, which until yesterday was “@Twitter,” needed an update.

Enter Gene X. Hwang, the former holder of @x, who unceremoniously had his name stolen by the owner of a car company where the steering wheel falls off when you drive. Speaking to Mashable, Hwang says he “got an email basically saying they are taking it.” At one point, Mashable notes, Twitter reportedly considered creating a service that would allow users to big on rare or unused handles. That wasn’t the case here. True to his brand of not paying people, Musk offered Hwang nothing for his handle besides “some merch” for one of the most radioactive brands on Earth and a meeting with “management if I like.”

Hwang has been tweeting from @X for 16 years. In 2018, he told the tabloid The Sun that he received offers ranging from $10,000 to $40,000 for the handle but “didn’t entertain any of them seriously.” Let it be known that if you turn down $40,000 for a Twitter name, a billionaire could just take it one day. Still, Hwang has a better attitude about all this than we do. Tweeting Xeeting from his brand-new, not cumbersome at all handle of @x12345678998765, Hwang posted, “Alls well that ends well,” a post now overrun with people asking how much he was paid for the handle.