Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, already a big proponent of Bitcoin, envisions a future where cryptocurrencies will help his company evolve from being a Fintech player to an Internet powerhouse with several services in its portfolio.
“In the long term [cryptocurrencies] will help us be more and more like an internet company where we can launch a product … and the whole world can use it, instead of having to go from market to market, to bank to bank to bank and from regulatory body to regulatory body,” he told the Australian Financial Review.
Presumably, Dorsey is referring to the idea of using unregulated cryptocurrencies or digital currencies to enable transactions for new products and services. The services he quotes in the interview span the gamut from hardware to analytics and payroll and lending.
It might be a while before Dorsey’s future comes to pass. As of this writing, cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin have generated adverse reactions from regulators and the general public alike. There are no mainstream use cases for them and their volatility merely acts as a feed into profits for unscrupulous traders.
Prominent cryptocurrencies also have problems scaling, meaning the number of transactions processed drops dramatically if several users or apps access their blockchains simultaneously.
No Twitcoins
In another interview, Dorsey told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that Twitter does not have plans to introduce a cryptocurrency on its platform.
Twitter competitor Facebook announced plans to introduce Libra, a blockchain and cryptocurrency, on its platform this past June. But the idea has not received a warm welcome from regulators and crypto community members, who are adamant that Libra is not a cryptocurrency.
Dorsey told the publications that he’d much rather use an “existing, open standard” currency like Bitcoin for the purpose. “I think open Internet standards serve every person better than ones controlled or started by companies,” he said. According to him, Bitcoin has a “high probability” of becoming the Internet’s native currency.
Dorsey has skin in the game as far as the success of Bitcoin is concerned. Square’s Cash App allows users to trade bitcoin and generated $2 million gross profit from bitcoin trading in its latest quarter. Dorsey is also an investor in Lightning Lab – a company that is developing a second layer solution to ease bitcoin’s congestion problems. Square has also formed a team to accelerate crypto payment adoption.