Jack Dorsey #24

Biography:

Jack Dorsey is an American entrepreneur, and the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter. 

He also founded and is CEO of mobile payments company Block Inc., formerly called Square.

He was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended school and the University of Missouri–Rolla until he moved to New York City. He enrolled at New York University, but dropped out shortly before graduation and moved to California. 

In 2000, he came up with the idea of an up-to-date, instant messaging service inspired by LiveJournal and AOL Instant Messenger, and for the following five years, Dorsey envisioned the concept that soon developed into Twitter.

In May 2010, Dorsey and co-founder Jim McKelvey launched Square, a small business platform that accepts debit and credit card payments on a mobile device. The business quickly went from 10 employees to 100 and a market capitalization of $3.2 billion in 2012, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015. 

Dorsey has been a long-time Bitcoin proponent and has always thought Bitcoin could be the native cryptocurrency of the internet. His Square has been involved in developing the technology with direct funding of Bitcoin Core developers.

2020 was a turning point for Square and Dorsey, who launched Square Financial Services and got the go-ahead from FDIC to open a bank. Square also launched a crypto division to support Bitcoin adoption through infrastructure, protocol development and UX design. 

Dorsey’s 2021:

2021 was a tumultuous year for Dorsey and Twitter, starting with the controversial censorship approaches that affected both the service and the crypto community in the last couple of years. Some criticized the censorship as inconsistent with Dorsey’s commitment to contributing to his open, permissionless financial service and creating decentralized and open social media platforms.

In February, Square purchased 3,318 Bitcoin, consolidating the position it had already built in 2020, with a total of 8,027 Bitcoin.

In March, Dorsey’s first-ever tweet from 2006 sold as an NFT for roughly $2.9 million in Ether, which Dorsey converted into Bitcoin straight away. He often confirmed he does not support Ethereum because it isn’t as open and decentralized as Bitcoin. His pledge to contribute to Bitcoin as the native currency of the internet started to materialize when he introduced BTC Lightning payments on Twitter in the last quarter of 2021.

In November, Dorsey announced his resignation as Twitter CEO and his full-time commitment to building decentralized finance on Bitcoin with Square, rebranded as Block Inc.

Dorsey’s 2022:

In the new year, Dorsey will keep his position as Twitter CEO until June, and then he will leave the company to focus on Bitcoin and Block Inc. entirely. Dorsey is expected to confirm his pledge to push Bitcoin adoption as the native currency of the internet and develop Block Inc. further in the decentralized finance sector. 

He will likely expand his operations on the African continent, since he’s famously passionate about pushing adoption in that region, where he has traveled extensively. He believes that’s where an open and decentralized monetary system is more needed to empower locals against authoritarian regimes and closed markets.