Bluesky is rolling out cash and live badges amid a surge in app installs

Social media network Bluesky is updating its app to allow anyone to participate when they stream on Twitch, adding specialized hashtags, known as Cashtags, to discuss publicly traded stocks.

The new features will likely help Bluesky capitalize on the recent surge in new installations, which arrived in the days after news of the X Deepfake broke.

On This week, California’s attorney general opened an investigation into xAI’s chatbot over the spread of “non-consensual sexually explicit material.”

In the wake of the controversy, Bluesky saw a spike in downloads in the United States. According to new data from market intelligence provider Appfigures, daily downloads of the Bluesky app on iOS have jumped nearly 50% from the period before deepfake news reached critical mass.

The company says Bluesky typically sees about 4,000 US installs per day, but from December 30, 2025 to January 6, 2026, Bluesky for iOS downloads in the US totaled about 19,500. From January 7, 2026 through January 14, downloads increased to 29,000 — a 49% increase.

Meanwhile, monetary tokens will allow the app to catch up with one of the most popular use cases for X: discussing stocks. To create a monetary sign, you can place a dollar symbol before a stock ticker symbol (for example, $AAPL for Apple).

The idea of ​​cash tags was first introduced by stock-focused social network Stocktwits, which now has over 10 million users, before the tags were later adopted by Twitter in 2012.

Additionally, Bluesky says it’s expanding access to a beta “Live Now” feature that lets users add a temporary “LIVE” badge to their avatar to indicate when they’re streaming online. Currently, this feature only supports Twitch and does not allow anyone to stream directly on Bluesky itself.

The increase in activity on Bluesky comes after the network saw a decline in downloads and usage last year. In April 2025, Appfigures noted that the startup’s downloads on social networks had fallen to new lows, and the average daily number of users on mobile devices had fallen by nearly 40% by the end of October, according to similar data. The Pew Research Center reported last year that a number of influencers now have Bluesky accounts, but they still tend to post more regularly on X.

This suggests that switching costs are higher than some might expect when it comes to replacing one real-time social network with another. Adding new features will only be part of the battle for Bluesky; It will also have to find a way to get users to change years of ingrained behavior.