Square’s CEO Jack Dorsey has stirred up an interesting discussion about Bitcoin, saying that the crypto is well on its way to being the sole digital currency to buy things on the Internet.
Dorsey, who’s also the CEO of Twitter, made the comments during an interview with The Times this week. He told the London-based media outlet that Bitcoin has the potential to not only be a choice ‘HODLrs,’ but it will grow in popularity as the choice for those who want to make purchases with it.
The comments gave many in the space a bit of pause, largely due to Dorsey, and his payment processing outfit Square (NYSE:SQ), standing to benefit greatly from more people making purchases with Bitcoin. So, there was a slight bit of “of course he’d make such a comment” from some observers.
In fact, Dorsey made the comments as part of his visit to London this week in which promoting Square is part of his agenda.
Let’s discuss.
The future
In speaking to The Times, Dorsey made it clear that cryptos built on distributed ledgers, or blockchains, will fare the best in the coming years.
To The Times, he said:
“The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be bitcoin. This would happen probably over ten years, but it could go faster.”
Personal motivations
Dorsey acknowledged that as Bitcoin has become more widely used, Square was among those charged with making sure its acceptance is wide ranging.
In addition to heading Square, Dorsey is one of the venture capitalist in Lightning Labs. This is an open protocol system that leverages the power of blockchains and smart contracts to make cheap, fast, private transactions. It’s considered to be a major breakthrough for processing Bitcoin transactions.
Dorsey reportedly said:
“[Processing Bitcoin transactions] is slow and it’s costly, but as more and more people have it, those things go away. There are newer technologies that build off of blockchain and make it more approachable.”
Positioning Square
Dorsey has already been positioning Square as a leader when it comes to processing Bitcoin payments. We’ve reported to you that Square has expanded its Cash App to allow more users to buy and sell Bitcoin with their phones.
The app was rolled out to select users last year, but now the number of users has been expanded to include most of its customers. It’s estimated that there are roughly seven million users..
Then there was a survey released earlier this month that found broad satisfaction for Square's services among merchants, with 38% rating Square as excellent and 58% rating it as good. This includes brick-and-mortar and online merchants.
When Square reported its earnings for the fourth quarter earlier this year, Dorsey said:
“We currently benefit a lot from our partnership model with cash and through [the] register. So we will continue to amplify that. Bitcoin for us is not stopping at buying and selling. We do believe that this is a transformational technology for our industry and we're going to learn as quickly as possible.”
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
