Twitter won’t launch crypto, Dorsey says as he takes jab at Libra

Social media platform Twitter doesn’t intend to launch a cryptocurrency, its founder and CEO Jack Dorsey made clear recently. While on a trip to Australia to promote Square, the other publicly traded company which he co-founded, Dorsey also aimed a jab at Twitter rival Facebook which launched its own crypto this year, saying that cryptocurrencies shouldn’t be privately controlled by companies.

Dorsey has been one of the biggest and most vocal cryptocurrency supporters. His company Square started offering crypto trading services to its clients last year, reporting $52 million worth of SegWitCoin (BTC) sold in the fourth quarter of 2018. And while Square will continue exploring other ways to integrate cryptocurrencies into its payment systems, Dorsey stated that Twitter will stay out of the crypto game in an interview with The Australian Financial Review.

With Facebook launching Libra, there were indications that other internet giants could follow suit. And as CoinGeek reported recently, a study by Cindicator revealed that 22% of the polled analysts believe that Amazon could launch a Libra rival in the near future. Other tech companies such as Microsoft, Alibaba, Google, Samsung and Twitter were also cited.

And while Twitter will stay out of the crypto game, Square will continue to benefit from the rising use of cryptocurrencies. He stated:

In the long term [cryptocurrencies] will help us be more and more like an internet company where we can launch a product … and the whole world can use it, instead of having to go from market to market, to bank to bank to bank and from regulatory body to regulatory body.

The San Francisco-based company could diversify from just offering payment infrastructure to developing services such as hardware, payroll, lending and analytics.

In response to the launch of Facebook’s Libra, Dorsey commented, “I think open Internet standards serve every person better than ones controlled or started by companies.”

Ever the Bitcoin supporter, he added, “I think [Bitcoin’s] the best bet because it’s been the most resilient, it’s around for 10 years, it has a great brand and it’s been tested a bunch. As I look at all cryptocurrencies that could fill that role of being the native currency for the internet, [Bitcoin is] a pretty high probability.”