Twitter has announced that it will be launching a new team focussed on cryptocurrency along with blockchains and other decentralised technologies. This is according to Tess Rinearson, who has been picked to lead the new initiative.
The team will be called Twitter Crypto. Rinearson has previously worked at payments provider Interstellar and has also worked at Tendermint, where she was part of the Tendermint Core consensus engine creation.
Rinearson took to Twitter to discuss the new team, saying that it would both include and go beyond cryptocurrencies. She added, “We’ll be exploring how we can support the growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies, and to support their work and communities. Looking farther ahead, we’ll be exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community, ownership and more.”
The team will also be given the task of “shaping the future of decentralised social media.” Twitter’s move is no surprise and the latest announcement appears to be part of a wider mission to create a core, crypto-focussed business unit. This mission has been spearheaded by Jack Dorsey and has led up to where Twitter is now.
The run up to Twitter Crypto
In 2019, Twitter boss Jack Dorsey made the firm’s first crypto hire for Square Crypto. The company hired former Google product management expert Steve Lee. Ever since the hiring, Dorsey has been talking about “decentralised social media”, which was also spoken about by Rinearson.
Twitter has also started to buy Bitcoin and Dorsey has been notably vocal about his support for the coi. Last year, Square bought 50m worth of the coin.
In February and July 2021, activity spiked. Dorsey and Jay-Z announced that they were stumping up 500 units of Bitcoin to help fund BTC development. Then, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed a plan to fund BTC development and also revealed that Dorsey was among the investors for this project.
In July 2021, Square announced that it was trying to build a Bitcoin hardware wallet to make Bitcoin more mainstream. During this month, Dorsey also announced that Bitcoin would be a big part of the company’s future, and explained his plans to integrate Bitcoin into existing Twitter offerings.
Last month, Twitter announced it’s new tips function which enables users to tip others in Bitcoin. Rinearson said, “Twitter Crypto will underpin all of this work, and serve as a ‘center of excellence’ for all things blockchain at Twitter.”
