Facebook’s cryptocurrency plan has attracted most of the Silicon Valley giants, but it failed to appeal to Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square.
Responding to a question regarding becoming a part of the Libra Association, Dorsey simply said, “hell no!”
Revealed at a Twitter media event in New York City, Dorsey’s short answer shows the micro-blogging platform’s stance towards the social media giant’s digital currency initiative. Dorsey also elaborated that to democratize the financial ecosystem, Libra is unnecessary.
Would Twitter join the Libra project? "Hell no," Jack Dorsey says. "Nothing within Libra had to be a cryptocurrency to do what they wanted to do."
— Alex Weprin (@alexweprin) October 24, 2019
“Nothing within Libra had to be a cryptocurrency to do what they wanted to do,” Dorsey added.
“I don’t know if it’s a gimmick,” he said, “but a cryptocurrency wasn’t necessary to make that work.”
Bitcoin is the king
Despite his dislike for Libra, Dorsey is one of the proponents of Bitcoin. He also introduced Bitcoin trading options at his payment processing platform Square, which turned out to be a hit for the company.
“It’s not an internet open standard that was born on the internet,” he attacked Libra. “It was born out of a company’s intention, and it’s not consistent with what I personally believe and what I want our company to stand for.”
He also criticized Mark Zuckerberg’s arguments on the defense of Libra. Zuckerberg was constantly pointing out subjects like freedom of speech, censorship, and the role tech platforms in democracy to pave the way to launch Libra.
“I fear that if we base too much in this one concept, we take away the ability to experiment and expand,” Dorsey said. “We are not just serving an American audience, we are serving a global audience […] The internet is somewhat of an emerging nation-state.”
Recently, seven high-profile members of the Libra Association, including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and Stripe, left the consortium to avoid negative regulatory scrutiny.
However, Facebook’s crypto subsidiary head revealed that 1,500 companies are in line to join Libra, of which 180 matches the standards of the consortium.
(Photo: TED Conference)
