X has hired Benji Taylor as its new head of design, bringing in one of crypto's most experienced product builders as the platform races toward an April launch of its X Money payments service.

Taylor announced the role on Wednesday, saying he now leads design for X, with ties also spanning xAI and SpaceX. His background reads like a DeFi resume: he founded Los Feliz Engineering, the team behind the self-custody wallet Family, which Aave Labs acquired in 2023. He then served as chief product officer at Aave until October 2025 before joining Coinbase's Base blockchain as head of design — a role he held until this week.

X product lead Nikita Bier said he had tracked Taylor's work for years and pushed to bring him on, calling one of his previous products "among the best designed" he had seen.

The hire lands at a pivotal moment. Elon Musk confirmed earlier this month that X Money is set to launch in April, offering peer-to-peer payments, bank deposits, a debit card, and cashback rewards across more than 40 U.S. states, with a proposed 6% yield on balances. Notably, Musk's original announcement made no mention of blockchain or crypto — but bringing in Taylor, whose entire career has been built around self-custody wallets and decentralized lending, raises questions about whether X Money's crypto layer runs deeper than advertised.

Taylor's move from Base — the Ethereum L2 built by Coinbase and now home to a booming onchain ecosystem — to X is a striking signal. It suggests X is serious about building financial products that could eventually blur the line between traditional payments and crypto rails.

Whether X Money remains a fintech play or evolves into something more onchain-native may partly depend on what Taylor builds next.