Jack Dorsey, billionaire tech founder and current CEO of Twitter, said he only owns bitcoin and that he supports the Lightning Network, a bitcoin network update that could make bitcoin payments speedier and less expensive, according to reports.
Dorsey tweeted on Tuesday (Feb. 5): “I only have bitcoin.”
Dorsey also founded payment company Square, which allows users to buy and sell bitcoin through the Cash app. He didn’t say how much bitcoin he owned.
The ubiquitous currency has lost quite a bit of value – 80 percent – since it reached a high of $20,000 in December of 2017. Despite this, Dorsey continues to support bitcoin, and has predicted that it will become the singular global currency one day and the “native currency” of the internet.
There’s a social media game called “lightning torch” that Dorsey took part in as well, where people add funds to a bitcoin payment and then pass the “torch” to someone else to add more funds. Each user adds 10,000 satoshis (about $0.34). The amount was up to around $98 on Wednesday (Feb. 6).
Dorsey participated in the game and passed the torch to Elizabeth Stark, the CEO of Lightning Labs, which is a blockchain company in which he has invested. “Cool example of #BitcoinTwitter experimenting on the Lightning Network,” Dorsey said.
The point of the game is to promote the Lightning Network, which would add another layer to the distributed ledger that currently sustains bitcoin. Lightning’s capacity passed 600 BTC for the first time and recently reached 646 BTC, which amounts to about $2.2 million.
Dorsey also espoused his loyalty to the currency in another tweet: “Bitcoin is resilient. Bitcoin is principled. Bitcoin is native to internet ideals,” he wrote.
In November of 2018, New York Stock Exchange Chairman Jeff Sprecher said that digital assets are here to stay, emphasizing the resilience of bitcoin, according to a report. “Somehow bitcoin has lived in a swamp and survived. There are thousands of other tokens that you could argue are better, yet bitcoin continues to survive, thrive and attract attention,” he said.
Dorsey was ranked 89th on the Forbes 2018 “400 Wealthiest Americans” list, and he reportedly has a net worth of $5.1 billion.
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