Jack Dorsey Sees Crypto as the Money of the Internet. But Will It Be Bitcoin?
February 3, 2019 by Paul de Havilland
With his CashApp growing quickly behind Square to begin encroaching on PayPal and Venmo, Jack Dorsey believes crypto will become the money of the internet. He doesn’t necessarily think that will be bitcoin.
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Jack Dorsey Wants a Global Cryptocurrency
Jack Dorsey told Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that while he himself has no plans to create a cryptocurrency, he sees crypto as being an integral part of an internet-based payments system.
“We’d love to see something become global currency. It enables more access, it allows us to serve more people and allows us to move faster around the world.”
But That Currency May Not Be Bitcoin
While Dorsey’s enthusiasm for crypto in general is obvious, he has become somewhat agnostic as to which cryptocurrency might become the global native internet currency. It is clear, however, that he thinks that role should rightfully be played by bitcoin:
“I believe the internet will have an native currency. I don’t know if it will be bitcoin. I think it will be given all the tests it’s been through, the principles behind it. It was something that was born on the internet.”
But that isn’t to say bitcoin’s role as the de facto money of the internet is a done deal. In fact, the serial entrepreneur sees bitcoin hodling as an impediment to that:
“We notice that people are treating it [Bitcoin] as an asset, like a virtual gold. We want to make it easy, just the simplest way to buy and sell Bitcoin. But we also knew that it had to come with a lot of educations, a lot of constraints.”
Could Another Cryptocurrency Become the Transaction Currency?
Responding to Dorsey’s interview, in a classic Ripple shill @CyberKenobi–to all 20 of his followers–argued for a currency that was faster, cheaper, more scalable, and more liquid:
@jack @bgarlinghouse Bitcoin is not fast enough, liquid enough, cheap enough, nor is it scalable. A digital gold indeed, but the environmental concerns of pow and centralized Chinese mining keeps it under suspicion as they say. Walk the walk. Xrp $xrp ripple btc $btc
— Ben (@CyberKenobi) February 2, 2019
The sentiment makes sense. But it might prove hard to sell an XRP solution as a bitcoin alternative given its more centralized nature. Furthermore, there are numerous efforts afoot to help bitcoin scale. One of those involves weaving tangle-style technologies into the bitcoin protocol.
Tribalism is nothing new to crypto, which partly explains why there are more than 1,400 currencies around–around 99 percent too many. Notably, last May, Dorsey told the audience at the Consensus blockchain conference in New York that:
“The internet is going to have a native currency so let’s not wait for it to happen, let’s help it happen… I don’t know if it will be bitcoin but I hope it will be.”
Have your say. Will there be a single native internet cryptocurrency, and will it be bitcoin?
Images via Pixabay
