Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said Bitcoin changes 'everything' for the better and he will work 'forever' to make currency work better. AFP
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said Bitcoin changes 'everything' for the better and he will work 'forever' to make currency work better. AFP
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said Bitcoin changes 'everything' for the better and he will work 'forever' to make currency work better. AFP
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey said Bitcoin changes 'everything' for the better and he will work 'forever' to make currency work better. AFP

Technology

Twitter & Square CEO Jack Dorsey says he's committed to making Bitcoin work better

He is part of a growing number of tech chief executives, who have become evangelists for investing in cryptos

Jennifer Gnana
Jennifer Gnana

May 15, 2021

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  • Arabic

Twitter and Square chief executive Jack Dorsey said Bitcoin changes "everything" for the better and he will work "forever" to make the crypto work better.

Mr Dorsey expressed his support for the cryptocurrency on his microblogging platform Twitter, in response to a tweet by the Square chief financial officer, Amrita Ahuja.

"Our bitcoin strategy hasn’t changed. We’re deeply committed to this community, including working towards a greener future through our Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative," Ms Ahuja wrote on Twitter.

Square is a digital payments company founded by the Twitter chief executive and Jim Kelvey and launched in 2020. The company valued at over $100 billion in 2020, is evaluating Bitcoin as an investment opportunity. Square has purchased a total of $220 million Bitcoin to date. Its Bitcoin asset is valued at $410m.

The crypto was trading at $48,523.20 on Saturday and is down 13 per cent over the past five days. Bitcoin plunged after Tesla's billionaire chief executive Elon Musk suspended the use of Bitcoin as a mode of payment for the company's electric vehicles because of "environmental concerns". Prior to Mr Musk's announcement, Tesla had invested $1.5bn in Bitcoin.

Mr Dorsey is part of a growing number of tech chief executives, who have become evangelists for investing in Bitcoin.

Twitter under Mr Dorsey plans to decentralise and launched a non-governmental organisation called Blue Sky to advance its goal.

"Square is doing exactly this for bitcoin with @SqCrypto," Mr Dorsey wrote on his social media channel in 2019.

In March, Mr Dorsey sold his first-ever tweet as a non-fungible token for $2.9m.

NFTs, which are enjoying growing popularity are a type of crypto token that is used to verify the authenticity of ownership. The NFTs are minted in small batches and are not interchangeable. The market for such tokens have taken off in recent months, rising above $250m.

On Thursday, the auction house Sotheby's accepted cryptocurrency as payment for a physical artwork for the first time, selling Banksy's iconic protest painting, Love is in the Air, for $12.9m.

The New York-based dealer teamed up with cryptocurrency platform Coinbase and said it is open to accepting both Bitcoin and Ether – the world’s biggest digital currencies. It did not disclose which cryptocurrency was used in the sale of the Banksy artwork.

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Based: Dubai Media City

Number of employees: 42 (34 in Dubai and a tech team of eight in Ankara, Turkey)

Sector: ConsumerTech and FinTech

Cashflow: Almost $1 million a year

Funding: Series A funding of $2.5m with Series B plans for May 2020

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Ali Kashief, Salem Rashid, Khalifa Al Hammadi, Khalfan Mubarak, Ali Mabkhout, Omar Abdelrahman, Mohammed Al Attas (Al Jazira), Mohmmed Al Shamsi, Hamdan Al Kamali, Mohammad Barghash, Khalil Al Hammadi (Al Wahda), Khalid Eisa, Mohammed Shakir, Ahmed Barman, Bandar Al Ahbabi (Al Ain), Adel Al Hosani, Al Hassan Saleh, Majid Suroor (Sharjah), Waleed Abbas, Ismail Al Hammadi, Ahmed Khalil (Shabab Al Ahli Dubai) Habib Fardan, Tariq Ahmed, Mohammed Al Akbari (Al Nasr), Ali Saleh, Ali Salmeen (Al Wasl), Hassan Al Mahrami (Baniyas)

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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

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