Bitcoin a ‘Key Trend’ for Twitter Says CEO Jack Dorsey

Bitcoin is one of three key trends for Twitter’s future, the social media platform’s boss Jack Dorsey told investors during the company’s Q2 earnings call on Thursday.

As reported by TechCrunch, Dorsey told investors that it’s “hugely important” to both Twitter and the shareholders to “continue to look at the [crypto] space and invest aggressively in it.”

“I think this is a big part of our future,” said Dorsey. “I think there is a lot of innovation above just currency to be had, especially as we think about decentralizing social media more and providing more economic incentive.”

Previously, Dorsey, a long-time crypto faithful, has repeatedly said that he sees Bitcoin as the “native currency for the internet.”

“If the internet has a native currency, a global currency, we are to move so much faster,” he said, pointing to Twitter’s products such as Super Follows, Commerce, Subscriptions, and Tip Jar.

Tip Jar was announced in May this year and is described as “a new way for people to send and receive tips.” Considering Twitter’s close ties with payments firm Square, another company helmed by Dorsey, the new feature looked a perfect match.

In late 2020 and early 2021, Square purchased a combined $220 million worth of Bitcoin to add to its corporate balance sheet.

Twitter bets on Bitcoin

Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s layer two scaling solution, is likely to be an important part of future endeavors too—earlier this year Dorsey said that it’s only “a matter of time” before Lightning is integrated into Twitter or BlueSky, a project aimed at creating a decentralized social media standard.

Notably, Dorsey also said that Twitter is not the only social media platform to be pushing ahead with digital currency initiatives, pointing to Diem (formerly known as Libra), a stablecoin project led by Facebook.

According to Dorsey, “there’s an obvious need for this,” and “an open standard that’s native to the internet is the right way to go.”

With that said, the Twitter boss emphasized that his focus will be on Bitcoin.

This falls in line with Dorsey’s recent announcement for the plans to launch a new entity focused on building an open-source platform for non-custodial and decentralized finance services based on Bitcoin. Square’s own hardware wallet, which is also in the works, is likely to be an integral part of the initiative.

Ultimately, as Dorsey said during the “The B Word” online conference earlier this week, the goal of Bitcoin is to help “create world peace.”

23 July 2021 10:44