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X.com was an online bank founded in 1999 by Elon Musk, Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho. In 2000, X.com merged with Confinity and became known as PayPal in 2001.
The X.com URL was originally purchased in the early 1990s by engineers Marcel DePaolis and Dave Weinstein for their company, Pittsburgh Powercomputer. They later sold the company but kept the URL to use for their personal email addresses. Over time, they received multiple bids for the URL, but none of the offers interested them until Elon Musk approached the duo in 1999. X.com was sold to Musk in a cash and stock deal. Musk invested the majority of his wealth in the deal, using the profits from the sale of his first company, Zip2. X.com was launched on December 7, 1999, by Musk, Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne, and Ed Ho.
X.com's online banking model was groundbreaking at the time. It offered benefits unmatched by its brick-and-mortar competitors, such as the ability to electronically transfer cash of any amount between multiple types of accounts and funds. The bank had no minimum balance restrictions for accounts, charged almost zero fees, and offered a $20 bonus to new customers. X.com was quickly popular and netted 200,000 users shortly after launching.
In 2000, X.com merged with its competitor, Confinity. Musk took over as CEO of the newly merged company, which continued to operate as X.com. While Musk was attached to the name X, focus groups revealed that consumers thought of the name as an adult-oriented website. Peter Thiel, cofounder of Confinity, also disliked the name. Thiel and Musk had several disagreements regarding Confinity's payment service PayPal, including its name, which Musk attempted to change to X-PayPal. The disagreements eventually led to Thiel's resignation. However, a few months later, Thiel and Confinity cofounder Max Levchin staged a coup after Musk left on vacation for his honeymoon. While Musk was still on his departing flight, PayPal's board of directors fired him as CEO and replaced him with Thiel. In 2001, X.com became known as PayPal.
