Jack Dorsey: Bitcoin Will Be Big Part of Twitter’s Future
Investing aggressively in decentralizing social media more will be ‘hugely important,’ CEO says.
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key takeaways
- A native currency for the internet will help Twitter grow products like Super Follows and Tip Jar more quickly
- Dorsey said making sure crypto wallets are simple and accessible will be key to more adoption
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey labeled bitcoin as one of three major trends most relevant to the social media company and its shareholders, noting that the cryptocurrency would be a significant part of Twitter’s growth.
Along with bitcoin, AI and decentralization of the internet were other areas that Dorsey, a longtime advocate of crypto, said he intends Twitter to lead the way in.
The global currency will allow people and companies to freely trade goods and services anywhere on the planet, Dorsey explained during Twitter’s second quarter earnings call on Thursday. A native currency for the internet will allow the company to move faster with products such as Super Follows and Tip Jar, he added.
Super Follows helps people on Twitter earn monthly income from the conversations they create. Tip Jar, introduced in May, allows people to receive and show support on Twitter with money by linking accounts to services such as Bandcamp, Cash App, Patreon, PayPal and Venmo.
“I think this is a big part of our future,” Dorsey said of utilizing bitcoin. “There’s a lot of innovation above just currency to be had, especially as we think about decentralizing social media more and providing more economic incentive, so I think it’s hugely important to Twitter and to Twitter shareholders that we continue to look at the space and invest aggressively in it.”
The comments came about a week after Square, a digital payments company for which Dorsey also serves as CEO, revealed that it would build a hardware wallet and service to make bitcoin custody more mainstream.
They also come a day after Dorsey appeared on a panel with Tesla’s Elon Musk and Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of Ark Invest, during which the three discussed bitcoin and its future.
The Twitter and Square CEO said during the event, called The B-Word, that the network and community shaped his views on bitcoin, calling it deeply principled, always evolving and even “weird as hell.”
He talked about encountering a system that was slow and “obtuse” when creating Square in 2008.
“One of the things we tried to do…is build an abstraction layer around this complication and around this predatory nature that the financial industry can tend to be and make it work for people,” the CEO explained. “But when I saw bitcoin in 2009, you see a chance to replace the whole foundation.”
Though he called the bitcoin network a beautifully designed protocol on the panel, Dorsey noted that some people remain confused about how to use it.
“The more energy we spend on wallets and making sure that wallets are simple and accessible and they’re non-custodial as well…really brings us forward,” he said.
