Photo Illustration: 731; Image: Getty Images The Twitter founder, Block CEO, and Elon Musk buddy is gazing into the future with laser eyes, and he wants you to follow him.
As he walked onstage at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Jack Dorsey was still technically the chief executive officer of two publicly traded companies, but he looked more like a beachside bartender. He wore a sunburst tie-dye shirt, with his head shaved and his long, graying beard untrimmed. He’d flown to South Florida, even though the official policy at one of his companies, Twitter, was that employees weren’t supposed to travel for work, and even though a group of activist investors had spent the better part of the previous 18 months trying to oust him for being unfocused.
No matter: Dorsey had resolved to enjoy himself in the most Jack Dorsey way possible. He went to the beach with a twentysomething model, Flora Carter, had dinner with Dave Portnoy, the professionally obnoxious sports media entrepreneur and stock trading enthusiast, and hung out with Floyd Mayweather, the professionally obnoxious boxer-turned-crypto-promoter. (Mayweather was in town on behalf of EthereumMax, a new cryptocurrency, and for an exhibition fight against bro influencer Logan Paul.) Onstage, Dorsey was heckled by Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist who’d famously handcuffed herself to the doors of Twitter’s New York office after her account on the social media service was banned in 2018. Dorsey had called her protest “brave,” and now, when Loomer jeered that Dorsey was the “king of censorship,” he replied earnestly. He said he hoped to remove the “corporate-ness” from Twitter, making it more open and decentralized, like Bitcoin.
Dorsey had lots to say about Bitcoin—in fact, a lot more than he had to say about either Twitter or Square, his payments company. He predicted Bitcoin would replace banks, bring economic opportunity to entrepreneurs in the developing world, and incentivize investments in renewable energy. “Bitcoin changes absolutely everything,” Dorsey stated matter-of-factly. “I don’t think there’s anything more important in my lifetime to work on.” Dorsey on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami. Five months later, Dorsey resigned from Twitter Inc. and announced that he was renaming Square. Henceforth the company, which helps local coffee shops and other small businesses process payments, would be called Block Inc. , which brings to mind the main technology underlying cryptocurrencies: blockchain. Officially, Block is Dorsey’s full-time job, but almost everybody in his orbit knows he has a pretty serious side hustle. While he was running both Twitter and Square, his employees often joked that Twitter was his “favorite child.” Now it appears—based on conversations with more than 30 current and former employees who’ve worked for him—the favorite child isn’t so much Block; it’s Bitcoin. — jack (@jack) November 29, 2021 Over the past two years, Dorsey, who declined to comment through a spokesperson, has fashioned himself as the currency’s unofficial spiritual leader and public defender, promoting it constantly from his Twitter feed and taking swipes at tech’s venture capitalists who are funding rival crypto projects. Last year, at a different crypto event alongside Elon Musk, Dorsey said he believed Bitcoin could bring about “world peace.” (Musk, the world’s richest person, became Twitter’s largest shareholder in March, deepening an alliance with Dorsey that has developed over several years.) During his dinner with Portnoy, Dorsey told him he wanted to focus exclusively on the digital currency. “He is as bullish on Bitcoin as anybody I’ve ever heard,” Portnoy said on his podcast.
Dorsey’s enthusiasm has implications for Block—which has grown in part thanks to a feature that makes it easy for regular people to buy Bitcoin from their phones and which has spent $220 million buying Bitcoin to keep on its balance sheet—and for the future of the cryptocurrency itself. Dorsey can be iffy as a manager, but as a futurological weather vane, he’s rarely wrong. As a former Twitter employee, who like others quoted in this story requested anonymity to avoid angering a former boss, puts it, “Jack hasn’t met a cult he didn’t wanna lead.” Sad to be leaving the continent…for now. Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!). Not sure where yet, but I’ll be living here for 3-6 months mid 2020. Grateful I was able to experience a small part. pic.twitter.com/9VqgbhCXWd — jack (@jack) November 27, 2019 The best way to understand what Dorsey is thinking about at any given moment is to follow his tweets. Twitter is where he posts everything, including what music […]
source How Jack Dorsey Quit Twitter to Become Bitcoin’s Spiritual Leader
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