Jack Dorsey, the CEO of both Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Square, Inc. (NYSE:SQ), and a self-made billionaire in his own right, has taken to the Bitcoin advocacy trail once more by teasing the industry with his first major hire for his proprietary “Square Crypto” service offering. Dorsey had envisioned long ago that the combination of Square Inc. and its 7 million active user base with his CashApp enabling service would surely be a match made in heaven, once technology “got the kinks out”. Bitcoin’s Lightening service seems to have done just that.
After joking with his audience a bit, Dorsey was happy to announce his stellar hire. Per reports: “Square Crypto, which until now only appeared to exist on social media, is the real deal. It’s been less than a month since Square Crypto announced they were nearing their maiden hire. Now the company made a splash by announcing on Twitter they lassoed Google alum and Silicon Valley angel investor Steve Lee for that distinction”.
To have drawn a major player from the Silicon Valley scene is quite an accomplishment and will reverberate through the industry and the valley. Lee has already been “working to improve Bitcoin” and quickly expressed his enthusiasm in a tweet from his Twitter handle “moneyball”: “Bitcoin, not blockchain. Very excited about this opportunity!”
As for the impact on Silicon Valley, Jeremy Welch, the chief executive of Bitcoin hardware and software provider Casa, has already been on the public record stating that anything that Jack Dorsey and his companies attempted to do with Bitcoin would be “huge”: “Silicon Valley hasn’t had the best view on Bitcoin overall. So, it would be significant on multiple levels, both in terms of adoption and their reputation and they have cachet with a lot of the bigger financial institutions.”
The industry action was swift. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley congratulated Square Crypto: “Congrats!! @moneyball is the perfect person for this role! So happy to see.” Avichal Garg, the co-founder of crypto asset management firm Electric Capital and fellow Google alum, cheered along, as well, saying: “@moneyball is amazing. Can’t think of anyone better for this role. Congratulations @sqcrypto and @moneyball!!!”
Although Square Crypto joined the social media scene in March, details of what Jack has planned have not been forthcoming other than to hint that: “They are working on something groundbreaking even for crypto.” While “Crypto” has secured a place in the effort’s name, insiders admit that the real action is with Bitcoin. Dorsey has made it known to all that would listen that his companies and many others would benefit from their being a single global virtual currency.
When he was asked recently whether that currency should be Bitcoin, his response was measured at the time:
I believe the Internet will have a native currency, and I don’t know if it’s Bitcoin. I think it will be [Bitcoin] given all the tests it has been through and the principles behind it, how it was created. It was something that was born on the Internet, was developed on the Internet, was tested on the Internet, [and] it is of the Internet.
Progress with the Lightening upgrades have most likely solidified his opinion. Dorsey’s primary concern is with keeping his 7 million merchants happy:
Broadly, we have this massive seller network of small, medium, and large businesses… and we would love to make it as fast and efficient and transactional as possible, and that includes looking at our seller base and our register… You know, it’s not ‘if’, it’s more of a ‘when’… How do we make sure that we are getting the speed that we need and the efficiency?… From a merchant perspective, and that’s something we really need to get right.
As for the vision from this point forward, the company answered that question quite succinctly when it stated: “So let’s set some expectations. True to @jack’s founding tweets, we are building open source projects that will make mass adoption not just possible but inevitable. Our goal isn’t to make money, but to improve it.”