Approval requested to fund sanctioned, official access to X (Twitter) as a mandatory source for the fund's research and conviction pipeline.
Approve an official X API v2 pay-per-use data budget of ~$60/month (typical), with a $100/month hard spend cap — a bounded worst case of ≈ $1,200/year. Usage-metered: we pay only for what we read, and the cap makes the downside fixed.
X has been designated a mandatory research source — a meaningful share of timely macro, commodities, gold and energy commentary breaks on X before it reaches long-form channels. To feed it reliably into the fund's structured research pipeline we need a stable, compliant data connection to a defined roster of ~15–20 professional accounts.
In February 2026 X restructured its API: the old fixed subscription tiers (Basic $200/mo, Pro $5,000/mo) are now closed to new customers. The only self-serve, sanctioned path available to a new subscriber today is pay-per-use — which, at our scale, is also by far the cheapest official option.
Automated daily pull of recent posts from ~15–20 vetted macro / commodities / gold / energy voices — no gaps, no manual checking.
Actual posts — verbatim text, author, timestamp — flow straight into the conviction pipeline (theme, stance, signal). No paraphrase or transcription risk on prices and figures.
Official, terms-compliant access. No scraping, no account-ban risk, no vendor that vanishes when X changes its defences.
| Item | Basis | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Unit price | Per post read (external account) | $0.005 |
| Volume at our scale | ~20 accounts × recent posts, pulled daily | ~12,000 reads/mo |
| Typical monthly cost | Volume × unit price (band $30–$90) | ≈ $60 |
| Hard spend cap (recommended) | Set in developer console — bounds worst case | $100/mo |
| Annual (capped worst case) | Fixed ceiling regardless of usage | ≤ $1,200 |
Pricing deep-read from X's live developer pricing page, 6 July 2026. Pay-per-use is metered and spend-capped, so the fund's exposure is bounded by the cap, not by usage.
| Option | Est. cost/mo | Assessment | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official X API v2 — pay-per-use | ~$60 | Sanctioned, reliable, structured posts, spend-capped | Recommended |
| Official — Basic / Pro subscription | $200 / $5,000 | Closed to new customers since Feb 2026; Pro is vastly oversized | Unavailable |
| Third-party scrapers (e.g. resellers) | ~$3–30 | Cheaper, but operate against X's terms — continuity and reputational risk on a source that drives decisions | Not for core feed |
| Free bridge / RSS routes | $0 | Effectively dead — verified: unreliable, no service guarantee, gray-area | Rejected |
Approve the ~$60/month pay-per-use budget with a $100/month hard cap. It is the only sanctioned self-serve route to a now-mandatory source, it delivers clean structured data with no compliance or continuity risk, and at a bounded ≤ $1,200/year it is immaterial against the research value of monitoring the fund's most time-sensitive commentary channel. On approval, the connection is a routine setup — no ongoing overhead.