Jack Dorsey on bitcoin: 'I don't think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on'
Billionaire Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, is extremely bullish on the future of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value.
"Bitcoin changes absolutely everything," Dorsey said Friday at the Bitcoin 2021 Conference. "I don't think there is anything more important in my lifetime to work on."
In fact, "if I were not at Square or Twitter, I would be working on bitcoin. If [bitcoin] needed more help than Square or Twitter, I would leave them for bitcoin," he said. "But, I believe both companies have a role to play."
To Dorsey, bitcoin has the potential to create a new financial infrastructure that is more inclusive and supportive for underserved communities, he said. For those living in different countries around the world, Dorsey also sees bitcoin as a way to protect against currency devaluation and expedite transfers of funds across border lines, he explained.
This is in part why Dorsey, with music mogul and entrepreneur Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, created a multimillion-dollar fund to further bitcoin development in Africa and India, he said.
"I don't think there is anything more enabling for people around the world," Dorsey said.
Though many critics of bitcoin disagree, dubbing it a speculative, volatile and risky investment that can be susceptible to fraud, its community sees the cryptocurrency as a decentralized, digital gold and a hedge against inflation.
Dorsey believes that bitcoin will become the native currency for the internet, he said, and "the only reason Square got involved with bitcoin is to that end."
Indeed, his financial services company Square added over $170 million worth of bitcoin to its balance sheet in February after first investing in the cryptocurrency in October. On Friday, Dorsey also announced that Square is "considering" making a hardware wallet for bitcoin.
"That's why we don't deal with any other 'currencies' or 'coins' because we're so focused on making bitcoin the native currency for the internet," Dorsey said.
Dorsey has consistently been an advocate for bitcoin on social media – in March, for example, Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT, converted its proceeds to bitcoin and donated it to a Covid-19 relief fund in Africa by GiveDirectly, a charity giving cash to people living in poverty.
"Whatever I can do, whatever my companies can do to make [bitcoin] more accessible to everyone is how I'm going to spend the rest of my life," Dorsey said.
Bitcoin is currently trading at around $37,000, according to CoinMarketCap, with a market value of over $694 billion.
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