Jack Dorsey – the CEO of payment platform Square and social media giant Twitter – is headlining bitcoin news again after serving as a featured speaker at the world’s biggest bitcoin conference, which recently took place in Miami, Florida.
Jack Dorsey Is Building a Wallet and Investing in Mining
Dorsey announced that Square is looking to build a new cryptocurrency hardware wallet that customers can use to store bitcoin. Dorsey says that over the past two years, bitcoin has become a staple of Square’s overall revenue. In 2019, for example, the company only made over $500 million through bitcoin and crypto transactions, while in 2020, this figure jumped to nearly $5 billion.
He now wants to provide a wallet that he says will give people more control over their portfolios and finances. In a statement, Dorsey explained:
Square is considering making a hardware wallet for bitcoin, and if we do it, we would build it entirely in the open, from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community… The exchange you used to buy your bitcoin probably attends to your security with good intent, but circumstances may reveal ‘custody’ means ‘IOU.’ Deciding to take custody and security of your bitcoin is complicated.
Dorsey has always been a huge advocate for bitcoin. In late 2020, his company Square added approximately $50 million in BTC to its balance sheet, becoming one of the first major institutions to publicly support and purchase the world’s number one digital currency by market cap. Several months later, the company added another $120 million to its portfolio, bringing the total amount of bitcoin it owned to nearly $200 million.
Aside from its work on a hardware wallet, Square is also looking to invest millions of dollars into a new crypto mining facility, which according to a press release, is set to be solar powered. The move is designed to bring cleaner methods of energy to an industry which allegedly uses tons of electricity and according to one report, has as large a carbon footprint as the entire city of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Some Feel It’s Too Hazardous
Bitcoin mining has been at the center of controversy for some time. Many environmentalists claim that the process uses so much energy that it is causing environmental damage that may not be reversible in the future. As a result, several financial heads have taken stances against current extraction processes and have ultimately worked against bitcoin until this factor can be fixed.
Elon Musk, for example, recently rescinded his decision to allow bitcoin payments for all Tesla-based goods and services, citing concerns with the bitcoin mining process as the primary reason, while Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame has said he will not be purchasing any more BTC mined in China due to the country’s consistent use of coal and standard fossil fuels to garner electricity for mining operations.