Bitcoin miner IREN tops X’s most-searched cashtags, beating Tesla and Bitcoin

Bitcoin miner IREN leads X’s most searched cashtags, overtaking perennial favorites, just days after the new feature was introduced. The company outpaced favourites like Tesla and Bitcoin itself, according to data released by X product lead and Solana ecosystem advisor Nikita Bier. The rankings reflect search interest on the platform between December 1, 2025, and January 14, 2026. 

IREN’s prominence on social media and investor platforms appears to be tied to the booming Bitcoin mining industry and the expansion of its technological footprint.

On Sunday, Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, first announced that the company is rolling out “Smart Cashtags” to allow for more accurate tagging of assets and smart contracts in posts. Bier had said the tags will act as shortcuts to real-time pricing and a feed of posts connected to the asset.

He remarked, “X is the best source for financial news — and hundreds of billions of dollars are deployed based on things people read here. We are building Smart Cashtags that allow you to specify the exact asset (or smart contract) when posting a ticker.” 

The announcement landed, however, just one day after Crypto Twitter reacted angrily to a Bier post that appeared to hint at new restrictions on how much users could participate in threads.

Bier says IREN and Tesla were the top tickers in the platform’s cashtag searches

In a recent update, Bier showed that IREN ranked first in X cashtag searches from December 1, 2025, to January 14, 2026, followed by Tesla, AST SpaceMobile, and Bitcoin, respectively. Then, tickers for Ondas Holdings, XRP, GameStop Corporation, Nebius Corporation, Opendoor Technologies Inc., and Ethereum made up the rest of the list. 

Following the results, one user inquired whether cashtags are detrimental to the algorithm’s functioning. Some also grew more curious about the Bitcoin miner IREN, questioning its nature and workings.

Another user also asked about the ranking of memecoin cashtags, while others shared their opinions on other altcoins that they thought deserved more attention. There were mentions of the tickers $ADA, $MON, $TON, and more.

Meanwhile, others shared how Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Onds are making the list tracks, noting their extreme bullishness. Some were also surprised that Solana was not ranked among the top tickers.

AB Kuai Dong says Musk may establish his own exchange or partner with other platforms

When Bier first announced the Smart Cashtags feature, its timing drew attention in the cryptocurrency community. Previously, there was speculation that X would limit replies after one of Bier’s other posts. 

Pseudonymous crypto analyst KALEO was one of the critics of the X executive’s earlier post, stating that limiting the frequency of replies would harm community-led conversations. “Imagine telling streamers that they’re limited to how often they can reply to their chat,” KALEO argued on X that it would be similar to stopping creators from interacting with their communities.

Nonetheless, Bier’s feature announcement elicited enthusiasm among community members. According to AB Kuai Dong, the post going viral led many to believe X might become a hub for stock and crypto trading via partnerships with Coinbase, Base, and legacy brokerages.

He wrote that many English-speaking users expect the platform to partner with Coinbase and stock brokers, with X serving as the entry point and the partners providing trading infrastructure. He also suggested that Musk could choose to build a native exchange, noting that X Money has been under development for nearly a year. 

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