Welcome to our spotlight article on Jack Dorsey. The co-founder of Twitter is a famous figure in the crypto space, being a strong proponent of Bitcoin and NFT technology. Including him as a source on Crypto24 was a doozy!
So, who is Jack Dorsey? Let’s find out.
Top 15 things to know about Jack Dorsey
- Jack Dorsey is, most famously, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter.
- He is also the founder and CEO of mobile payments company Block Inc., formerly called Square.
- A Missouri, he enrolled at New York University, but left before graduating and moved to California.
- One of Jack’s early innovations was inspired by instant messaging services like AOL had created. Over the next five years, this evolved into the foundation of Twitter.
- Twitter was launched in 2006, and by 2012 it had over 100 million users, 340 million tweets per day, and billions of searches. By 2022, it had nearly 400 million users. It is one of the “big five” social media platforms, alongside Meta (formally Facebook), Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
- Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey launched Square in May 2010. Their idea was to build a platform that could handle debit and credit card payments on a mobile device. Within two years, its market cap exploded to 3.2 billion USD. In 2015, it became big enough to be listed on the NYSE, which is a testament to their success and growth.
- In the crypto space, Dorsey has been a long-time Bitcoin proponent and has always thought Bitcoin should be the real native cryptocurrency of the internet.
- In 2020, Square was accepted by the FDIC in their application to open a bank. At the same time, they opened a crypto division to promote Bitcoin adoption and work on related infrastructure, protocol development, and UX design.
- Notably, Square purchased roughly 5000 Bitcoin in 2020.
- Dorsey came under fire due to his censorship decisions on the platform. He was criticized as being hypocritical with regards to his supposed commitment to permissionless and open financial and socia platforms. Most prominently, he censored and then banned Donald Trump’s account in the wake of the State Capitol attack.
- In February 2021, Square bought another 3,318 Bitcoin. Square was rebranded to Block Inc. in late 2021.
- In March 2021, Dorsey’s first-ever tweet from 2006 sold as an NFT for roughly $2.9 million in Ether, which Dorsey converted into Bitcoin straight away. He is not in favor of Ethereum over Bitcoin, due to its lack of decentralization and openness when comparing the two,.
- In fact, integrating Bitcoin payments into Twitter was on his plans before leaving the position.
- In 2022, Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter, leading up to the platform’s acquisition by Elon Musk. His focus would be on Block Inc. and Bitcoin, promoting crypto’s worldwide adoption.
- Jack is particularly interested in pushing for Bitcoin adoption in Africa, as he feels it is an ideal candidate for a decentralized financial system. This would be a stark contrast to existing authoritarian financial institutions and closed markets.
As you can see, Jack has a strong track record in the technology sector, and his involvement in crypto has not gone unnoticed. Including his Twitter account on Crypto24 as one of our trusted sources will no doubt provide great value to our users.
