The internet 'needs a native currency' and Jack Dorsey wants to help it be bitcoin
- Square CEO Jack Dorsey wants his company to be at the forefront of getting cryptocurrencies like bitcoin adopted as global means of payment.
- "The internet is going to have a native currency so let's not wait for it to happen, let's help it happen," says Dorsey, who also runs Twitter.
- Using bitcoin or another cryptocurrency as a global currency would lower the barrier for Dorsey's payments company to enter new markets, he says.
Square CEO Jack Dorsey wants his company to be at the forefront of getting cryptocurrency accepted as legitimate means of global payment.
"The internet is going to have a native currency so let's not wait for it to happen, let's help it happen," Dorsey said on stage at the Consensus blockchain conference in New York Wednesday. "I don't know if it will be bitcoin but I hope it will be."
The CEO, who also runs Twitter, said he's a "huge fan" of bitcoin and appreciates its underlying technology.
Using it or another cryptocurrency as a global currency would lower the barrier for Dorsey's payments company to enter new markets, he said.
"If we were able to use it a currency today, we could release our apps in every app store around the world instead of the five we're in," Dorsey said. Since Square deals with fiat currency, Dorsey said the company has to approach each market differently, find a unique banking partner, and work with different regulators depending on the country.
Square launched cryptocurrency trading through its Cash app in January.
The payments processing company said it sold a total of $34.1 million in bitcoin in the first quarter. Square spent $33.9 million to buy bitcoin to allow people to trade it through its Cash mobile payments app. As a result, adjusted revenue from bitcoin was just $200,000.
Square's mobile payment app is growing faster than PayPal's Venmo and is getting an added boost because it allows transactions in bitcoin, according to Nomura Instinet.
Dorsey has been notoriously bullish on bitcoin's role in the future of payments, and told the Sunday times newspaper in March he expects bitcoin to become the single global currency within the next decade.
Dorsey is a personal investor in bitcoin and said he expects the digital currency to be used for simple things like coffee. The CEO predicted a 10-year timeline "but it could go faster," the U.K.-based paper reported.
Others, including Stanley Druckenmiller, have been skeptical about a practical use for bitcoin. He told CNBC in December that he doesn't hold bitcoin and it won't work as currency "because you can't do transactions, particularly retail transactions, with this kind of volatility."
Bitcoin has fallen roughly 40 percent this year, and was trading near $8,260 Wednesday.