Dorsey oversaw several moves to embrace Bitcoin and crypto technology at large during his tenure at the helm of Twitter.
Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter. The Big Tech entrepreneur tweeted out an email announcing his resignation to the company Monday. The message read: “After almost 16 years of having a role at our company… from co-founder to CEO to Chair to Exec Chair to interim-CEO to CEO… I decided it’s finally time for me to leave… I want you all to know that this was my decision and I own it.”
Jack Dorsey’s departure from Twitter Inc. TWTR, -2.74% as its chief executive has stirred up discussions about the future for the tech pioneer who is widely viewed as one of the biggest boosters for bitcoin and crypto.
A host of questions were currently swirling in the crypto-verse on the heels of the news, including: What does his exit mean for Twitter’s relationship with crypto? What does it mean for payment processor Square Inc. SQ, +0.37%, where Dorsey is also CEO? And what is Dorsey’s longer-term game plan for digital assets and blockchain?
Decentralization of power on the internet is a major personal theme for Dorsey. At Twitter, he spearheaded the funding of a project called BlueSky, which envisions a set of openly published standards for social media companies, so users of different social media networks can communicate more easily with one another. New Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has been central to chasing this vision, which recalls the way the internet was originally built on top of common standards.
Dorsey has also been a vocal advocate of decentralizing the workplace. Twitter was one of the first companies to announce the option for employees to work from home indefinitely in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, Dorsey had discussed relocating part-time to Africa as a way to “work decentralized,” although he drew back on that plan as the Covid pandemic grew more serious.
One challenge for Dorsey and Square is his well-known allegiance to bitcoin, which is increasingly just one cryptocurrency among many, and not the most technically sophisticated one. Wang says Square needs “to be in the middle of smart contracts,” a technology most firmly established on the Ethereum blockchain. A coming upgrade to bitcoin called Taproot promises to facilitate smart contracts using bitcoin, but it would seem smarter to spread one’s bets.
