UsePaid, a memecoin fee-splitting tool, has been sending U.S. dollar payments to tagged X accounts through X Money. Its public ledger shows that, as of 2 p.m. Taiwan time on Sept. 26, the project had collected about $2.895 million in onchain fees and paid about $1.536 million to X users through X Money.
An official post from the project on X on Sept. 26 put the payout figure at $1.44 million. On Sept. 17, it had said total payments had only just passed $100,000.
How the system works
After launching a token on pump.fun, issuers can permanently direct 100% of the token’s creator fees to the UsePaid treasury and add the line “Fees to @handle via UsePaid” in the token description. Those creator fees are the portion of each trade that pump.fun allocates to the token issuer. The more a token trades, the more fees accumulate.
UsePaid periodically withdraws that money onchain. It converts 80% into U.S. dollars and sends it through X Money to the tagged X account. The remaining 20% is used to buy PAID, the platform token, on the open market and burn it.
The tagged person does not need to agree beforehand, register, or connect a wallet. Project documentation says that is part of the design. In the project’s words, the first time a recipient hears about it is when the money arrives, together with a public reply explaining where it came from. For each payment, @UsePaid replies to the recipient on X with the amount and the token source.
The dollars come from UsePaid’s own X Money account. According to the report, the project first transfers SOL to Kraken, converts it into dollars, and then deposits the funds via ACH. A note in the website footer also says UsePaid is not affiliated with X.
PAID buybacks and token data
PAID has risen alongside the payout activity. Records on UsePaid’s analytics page show that the protocol has been buying and burning the PAID token associated with the pump.fun contract 98kfF7…pump. The cumulative buyback spend was about $550,000, and about 36.37 million tokens had been burned.
DexScreener data cited in the report showed that, at the same time, PAID had a market capitalization of about $41.3 million, a 24-hour increase of roughly 350%, and about $31.8 million in daily trading volume in its main PumpSwap pool.
Top tagged recipients
Rankings on the UsePaid explorer page show that the largest amount went to Elon Musk through a token named “Elon Coin,” at about $110,800. A token tagging e/acc movement initiator Beff Jezos had paid about $82,700. Maye Musk was listed at about $50,300, and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev at about $48,900.
The list also included Donald Trump, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, and charitable organizations such as Make-A-Wish America.
Nikita Bier himself was tagged by a token called “Nikita Boar,” with about $39,900 shown as paid. On Sept. 26, prediction market Polymarket posted on X that some X users had described the experience as a “financial DDoS,” with tens of thousands of dollars arriving through X Money without prior consultation.
Not every payment can be claimed
UsePaid’s documentation says X Money is available only to users who are at least 18 years old and live in the United States. If a recipient has not activated X Money, the funds remain pending. If they are not claimed within 14 days in most cases, the money is returned to UsePaid.
According to the same documentation, returned funds are split in half: one half goes to the protocol treasury, and the other half is used to buy back and burn PAID. That means if a tagged celebrity is not a U.S. resident, the money linked to that token ultimately flows back into the protocol.
Opt-out feature is now live
Former X product lead Nikita Bier responded to the discussion on Sept. 17 and said the product was “a pretty creative hack on XMoney,” but added that people should have the option to opt out or unlink if they do not want to be associated with a token.
He wrote: “It’s a pretty creative hack on XMoney, but I would give people the option to opt-out (or unlink) if someone doesn’t want to be associated to a token. I can imagine traders harassing users to endorse it + contributing to reply spam.”
UsePaid later replied that it agreed completely and said the feature would be added soon. The website now has an opt-out page. After signing in with an X account and confirming, a recipient can stop payments, remove tokens tagging that account from the site, and prevent the launch page from accepting that handle as a recipient going forward.
Another option is to disable incoming payments directly in X Money. The project’s FAQ says that even if someone opts out, other users can still launch a token on pump.fun using that account name. The unpaid fees, though, are then split between the protocol treasury and PAID buybacks.
What the FAQ says
In its FAQ, UsePaid says it converts pump.fun creator fees into dollars, sends 80% to the tagged X account through X Money, and uses 20% to buy back and burn PAID. As of Sept. 26, total payouts stood at about $1.536 million.
On whether tagged recipients can refuse the money, the project says yes. They can log in to the website’s opt-out page or turn off payments in X Money. Even so, unpaid fees are split between the protocol treasury and PAID buybacks, and other users can still issue tokens using that account name.