On March 20th, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter & Square, announced that $32 billion payments company Square is planning on hiring up to five individuals to develop “open source contributions to the Bitcoin and crypto ecosystem.”
Up to four of the possible open positions are for engineers–particularly those who have prior experience in building blockchains. One of the positions is for a designer. Each of the positions is full-time, and the new hires will either work at Square’s San Francisco headquarters or remotely. And hey, they can even be paid in Bitcoin.
#BitcoinTwitter and #CryptoTwitter! Square is hiring 3-4 crypto engineers and 1 designer to work full-time on open source contributions to the bitcoin/crypto ecosystem. Work from anywhere, report directly to me, and we can even pay you in bitcoin! Introducing @SqCrypto. Why?
— jack (@jack) March 20, 2019
Jack Dorsey: A Raging Bitcoin Bull?
Interestingly, Dorsey said that the new hires would report directly to himself, implying that his interest in developing these open-source solutions is of a high priority. Why is this?
Dorsey explained in subsequent tweets that “last week I was considering my hack week project, and asked @brockm: ‘’what is the most impactful thing we could do for the bitcoin community?’ His answer was simple: ‘pay people to make the broader crypto ecosystem better.’ This resonated with me immediately, so we’re doing it.”
“This will be Square’s first open source initiative independent of our business objectives,” he continued. “These folks will focus entirely on what’s best for the crypto community and individual economic empowerment, not on Square’s commercial interests. All resulting work will be open and free.”
Dorsey added that Square has taken much from the open-source community and that this is his way of “giving back.”
He also said that the reason for adding a designer into the mix is because “this is an underfunded area in the crypto ecosystem,” and that design was important for the ‘soft’ sides of the crypto ecosystem, like education and user-friendliness.
Why add a designer into the mix? I believe this is an underfunded area in the crypto ecosystem. Great design will help more people access this technology faster and better. And we want to see more work to educate, like this: https://t.co/3hBdEDLk3e
— jack (@jack) March 20, 2019
This latest statement is perhaps Dorsey’s boldest move to support cryptocurrency–particularly Bitcoin–so far, but it is far from the only public support that he has shown for the crypto industry.
Dorsey’s interest in Bitcoin was also explained in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan several months ago. NewsBTC quoted Dorsey’s interview on Rogan’s show, saying that the internet needs its own native currency.
“The internet has always wanted its own currency but it hasn’t had the technology (right principles, uniform, passionate early adopters) until 10 years ago,” Dorsey explained. “I think it will be [Bitcoin] given all the tests it has been through and the principles behind it, how it was created. It was something that was born on the Internet, was developed on the Internet, was tested on the Internet, [and] it is of the Internet.”
On another podcast with crypto industry insider Stephen Livera, Dorsey said that he intends to add support for the Lightning Network onto Square. According to his own Twitter feed, Dorsey is also #stackingstats, meaning that he is making weekly Bitcoin purchases in order to support the network.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
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