“Just that action of owning it [Bitcoin] will change people’s mindsets in fundamental ways that are net positive and compounds throughout their communities and encourages other actions like sellers and merchants around them doing similar things.”

Biography:

Jack Dorsey is an American programmer and internet entrepreneur born in St. Louis, Missouri. He went to the University of Missouri-Rolla for a couple of years before transferring to New York University in 1997, but he dropped out before graduating and moved to California.

In San Francisco, Dorsey co-founded Twitter with Evan Williams and Christopher “Biz” Stone in 2006, inspired by the idea of an up-to-date instant messaging service like LiveJournal and AOL Instant Messenger. He became Twitter’s CEO and remained in that position until 2008, when he took the board’s chairman role. He went back to being the CEO of Twitter in 2015 after the departure of Dick Costolo, a position he remained in until November 2021. He remained a member of the board until May 2022.

In 2009, Dorsey and Jim McKelvey co-founded mobile payments company Block, an umbrella company that hosts Cash App, Square and Afterpay, which offers devices and software for credit card transactions. He serves as “Block head,” which is how Block refers to its principal executive officer role. Square expanded its operations to global markets in 2013 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

In 2020, Dorsey launched Square Financial Services and was licensed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to open a bank and a crypto division to support Bitcoin adoption through infrastructure, protocol development and UX design. During the early years of Square, Dorsey also discovered Bitcoin and became interested in the technology and its potential as a payment method. As a currency, he considers Bitcoin the native cryptocurrency of the internet.

Dorsey’s 2022:

In April, Blockstream and Dorsey’s Block announced they would build infrastructure to mine Bitcoin using solar- and battery-powered facilities in Texas, employing solar and storage technology from Tesla. 

In May, Dorsey stepped down from the board of directors of Twitter to focus on Block and Bitcoin. He became involved in many Bitcoin projects to push adoption in Africa, where he traveled extensively throughout the year. He’s firmly convinced Bitcoin adoption can help empower people in Africa against authoritarian governments and help them gain more economic ground. 

In the first quarter of 2022, Block hit $1.3 billion in profits and $43 million in BTC trading revenue, producing an excellent performance despite Bitcoin’s downtrend over the year. On the other hand, Cash App generated $1.73 billion of Bitcoin revenue during the same period, down 51% year-over-year.

Dorsey sparked controversy across the community when he declared that Web3 is not truly decentralized because VCs and their limited partners own it. He also stated that he’s working on developing Web5, which only utilizes Bitcoin, the only cryptocurrency he believes is purely decentralized.

Dorsey’s 2023:

Following the latest Twitter developments — from Elon Musk’s takeover to the release of the “Twitter Files” — Dorsey started 2023 by explaining his policies while leading Twitter. He announced that he left Twitter due to the complex environment within the company in the last few years.

Despite leaving Twitter, Dorsey has still committed himself to helping build a genuinely free, decentralized social media network. He announced his support for Signal and Nostr — a “Twitter-style” social media network created by Bitcoiners — by providing grants to help their development.

His commitment to pushing Bitcoin adoption in Africa continues while he focuses on developing and expanding Block and supporting various companies and decentralized tech projects, including Tor.