Twitter Launches Crypto Dedicated Team — A Move That Could Make Digital Assets The Currency of the Internet
Twitter announced it launched a dedicated crypto team, which will focus on everything blockchain, crypto and decentralized technologies, “including and going beyond cryptocurrencies.” The move comes amid a rapidly changing social media landscape, which is embracing the metaverse at lightning speed.
See: Decentralized Social Media on Solana’s Blockchain Could Change How Fast We Enter the MetaverseFind: The Rise of the Metaverse: NFT-Focused Investment Firm Sfermion Raises $100 Million
It also comes two months after the company launched Twitter Tips, a method to tip content creators with Bitcoin via the Lightning network.
Twitter said it hired crypto engineer Tess Rinearson to lead the effort.
I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Twitter, to lead a new team focused on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies—including and going beyond cryptocurrencies.✨ pic.twitter.com/HaP0k5hUOq
— Tess Rinearson (@_tessr) November 10, 2021
“As I build out the team, we’ll be working to figure out what crypto can do for Twitter, as well as what Twitter can do for crypto. Twitter truly ‘gets’ crypto (hello bitcoin tipping & NFTs!) but there’s so much more to explore here.” Rinearson tweeted.
According to her subsequent tweets, she said that the team will be exploring how it can support the growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies and to support their work and communities.
“Looking farther ahead, we’ll be exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community, ownership and more,” she tweeted. “Twitter Crypto will underpin all of this work, and serve as a ‘center of excellence’ for all things blockchain at Twitter. We’ll be hiring for roles in engineering and product. If this sounds exciting, please get in touch! My DMs, as always, are open.”
Anthony Georgiades, co-founder and COO of NFT marketplace Pastel Network, told GOBankingRates that Twitter’s move is a “massive watershed moment for the crypto ecosystem — like was the Meta announcement.”
“It is basically saying: ‘Cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, and the metaverse are here to stay. How can we aid in their progress and advancement?’ Having these technology giants officially ‘backing’ crypto will definitely help attract more people to this still very novel world and will help most definitely to increase the adoption and development of the metaverse. I also hope Twitter will dedicate resources not only to exploring the various applications of crypto in the social media sphere and the metaverse but also to education and making crypto more approachable to the layperson,” he said.
“For users, they are part of a modern-day Renaissance. There is a whole new world being built and with companies like Twitter and Meta prioritizing its development, it is closer than ever previously imagined.”
Speaking at the B Word Conference, a Bitcoin-focused initiative that aims to demystify and destigmatize mainstream narratives about Bitcoin, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had said that his hope for Bitcoin, “is that it creates world peace or helps create world peace.”
“We have all these monopolies of balance and the individual doesn’t have power and the amount of cost and distraction that comes from our monetary system today is real and it takes away attention from the bigger problems […] You fix that foundational level and everything above it improves in such a dramatic way. It’s going to be long-term but my hope is definitely peace,” he said at the time.
Mikkel Morch, Executive Director & Risk Management at crypto/digital assets hedge fund ARK36, told GOBankingRates that by pursuing greater integration with crypto, Twitter seems to be willing to bet on the idea that digital assets — and Bitcoin in particular — could become the native global currency of the internet.
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“It is remarkable to see a mainstream company choose the direction for its future growth based on such a premise – a premise that still may have seemed impossible just a year ago,” Morch said. “Whether we actually achieve such global adoption levels of Bitcoin remains to be seen but there’s no doubt that the future of the internet – and finance alike — will be increasingly decentralized.”
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