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.
#bitcoin changes *everything*…for the better.
— jack (@jack) May 14, 2021
And we will forever work to make bitcoin better. https://t.co/wssrF2U0P0
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.
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. And as we shared in February, we continue to assess our bitcoin investment on an ongoing basis. Nothing new here. https://t.co/X9YjFt6J1k
— Amrita Ahuja (@AmritaAhuja) May 14, 2021
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.
Twitter is funding a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. The goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard. 🧵
— jack (@jack) December 11, 2019
"Square is doing exactly this for bitcoin with @SqCrypto," Mr Dorsey wrote on his social media channel in 2019.
Square is doing exactly this for bitcoin with @SqCrypto. For social media, we’d like this team to either find an existing decentralized standard they can help move forward, or failing that, create one from scratch. That’s the only direction we at Twitter, Inc. will provide.
— jack (@jack) December 11, 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.
