Jack Dorsey, the American billionaire who is the co-founder and CEO of microblogging platform Twitter and the CEO of payments solutions provider Square, says he intends to build a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin.
Square was founded in February 2009, or just one month after Bitcoin’s initial release. The three co-founders are Jack Dorsey, Jim McKelvey, and Tristan O’Tierney.
Four years after the launch of Venmo, PayPal’s peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payment solution, Square (whose founder and CEO is Jack Dorsey) launched a competitor called “Square Cash”, a beautiful, simple, and fun-to-use app, which got renamed to “Cash App” later.
Cash App, which is one of Square’s most popular products, allow a user to request money from and to transfer money to another user. Users can withdraw the money via a debit Visa card called “Cash Card” or by transferring it to a bank account.
On July 15, Dorsey revealed on Twitter that Square is creating a new division (with a name to be determined in the future) that has as its main goal the building of a Bitcoin-focused open developer platform that will make it easier to build decentralized financial services. He went on to say everything about this “new business” would be done in a completely open/transparent manner:
Like our new #Bitcoin hardware wallet, we’re going to do this completely in the open. Open roadmap, open development, and open source. @brockm is leading and building this team, and we have some ideas around the initial platform primitives we want to build.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) July 15, 2021
He also explained how this new division of Square would be different from the existing division Square Crypto:
We’ll set up Twitter and github accounts soon and update this thread on where to find them.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) July 15, 2021
In a tweet published last Friday (August 27), Dorsey announced to his 5.6 million followers that Square was in the process of designing a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin. The tweet came as a reveal for Square’s previously announced TBD project, which will focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) services.
Dorsey’s tweet was in reply to a comment by Mike Brock, general manager for TBD. In a series of tweets published the same day, Brock said his team believed Bitcoin will become the “native currency of the internet.” Brock explained the new project would solely focus on creating a “sound global monetary system for all.”
The general manager highlighted the current drawbacks to purchasing Bitcoin, including a heavy reliance on exchanging fiat via centralized custodial services such as the Cash App or Coinbase. Brock said TBD intends to solve the problem of providing a non-custodial wallet to users “anywhere in the world” through a decentralized exchange.
Getting bitcoin today typically involves exchanging fiat at a centralized and custodial service like @CashApp or @Coinbase. These on- and off-ramps to Bitcoin have a number of issues, and aren’t distributed evenly around the world.
— Mike Brock (@brockm) August 27, 2021
He went on to explain the platform will be entirely public developed, open-source and open protocol, and that “any wallet will be able to use” the service. He also insisted the new exchange would not have a foundation or governance model for TBD to hold control over, concluding “Permissionless or bust.”
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
Tech Leader Jack Dorsey Wants To Build a Decentralized Exchange for Bitcoin
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