Jack Dorsey Doubles Down on Bitcoin With $170 Million Investment
Jack Dorsey donated 1 BTC to Bitcoin research and development center Brink as Square, the financial company he founded and directs, invest $170 million in Bitcoin.
The social media company he directs made the news recently when its CFO, Ned Segal, stated that Twitter had been considering allowing its employees to ask to be paid using Bitcoin, something that would require the company to invest heavily in BTC.
Mr. Dorset co-founded and acts as CEO of Square, a company that provides financial services and mobile payment solutions, which is valued at $120.67 billion according to Yahoo Finance.
The company which, had previously invested $50 million in BTC back in 2020, has now invested $170 million in BTC according to a public statement published on Tuesday.
The company commented that,
“Combined with Square’s previous purchase of $50 million in bitcoin, this represents approximately five percent of Square’s total cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of December 31, 2020.”
In the statement, Square also made it clear that the company believes in the future of cryptocurrency as a means for individuals to participate in the global market and secure their financial future, which will be reflected in the future by the company’s plans to continue investing in BTC.
The news comes just weeks after Tesla’s acquisition of $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and the announcement of plans to accept it as a payment method for its products, which resulted in the price of BTC skyrocketing in the next few days.
Funding the Future of Bitcoin
Jack Dorsey has been vocal about his support for bitcoin and blockchain in general, revealing that he didn’t only personally invest in Bitcoin but also ran his own node in the network. Now, Mr. Dorsey is directly contributing to projects focused on the continued development of the Bitcoin network.
According to Brink’s official Twitter account, Dorsey donated 1 BTC to their developing funding efforts, the equivalent of over $50 thousand at the time of publication.
Non-profit organizations and individual contributors are essential to the success of Bitcoin and other open-source crypto projects who maintain and update them by reviewing and creating new code.
This approach does not only increase innovation in the industry but also adds transparency and security to projects by allowing members of the community to review the code and provide feedback on potential bugs or vulnerabilities that could cause trouble if not fixed.
Groups like Brink further improve the decentralization of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin by allowing them to operate independently of for-profit companies that could impact the development of the project, making donations a necessity to support these efforts.
Brink obtained 501(c)(3) status back on February 10 according to an official Tweet, which will allow the organization to accept tax-deductible donations from contributors.
Bitcoin’s Recent Market Performance
After reaching an all-time high of $58,640.77 on Feb 21st, Bitcoin’s value dropped to $45.680 on February 23rd according to CoinGecko data. The drop came at a time when billionaires Elon Musk and Bill gates share their doubts regarding the current value of the cryptocurrency.
Mr. Musk replied to a Tweet by Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff in which he criticized the intangible nature of BTC and compared it to gold, by stating: “Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter.”. He then added: ”That said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol.”
While his remarks didn’t have a drastic impact on BTC’s price but were also shared by Bill gates in an interview with Bloomberg when he said that investors should not follow Musk and Tesla’s example of investing in BTC.
Criticism toward Bitcoin is nothing new but criticism from prominent magnates like Musk and Gates has shown to have a great influence on how the market reacts to crypto.
While Bitcoin and altcoins seem to be recovering after a brief drop in the market, the future is uncertain after weeks of the bull run that saw the crypto market capitalization reach almost $1.8 trillion on February 21, dropping to $1.58 at the time of publication.
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OhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Nicholas Say, @Khareem Sudlow