Jack Dorsey resigned as Twitter CEO a few months ago, saying he wanted to focus on Blockchain (formerly Square), a company that operates blockchain services. However, he seems to be more interested in bitcoin than anything else and will play a very important role for Ramzarz in the future.
We still knew Jack Dorsey as the CEO of two big companies when Jack Dorsey took the stage at the Bitcoin Conference 2021 in Miami, USA, but Dorsey was more like a barista near a beach. With a long, irregular beard, he wore a shaved head and a T-shirt and came to Miami from South Florida.
However, he enjoyed the trip in exactly the way he did. Dorsey had dinner with Dave Portnoy , a well-known sports media entrepreneur and stockbroker, and met with Floyd Mayweather , a well-known boxer who had turned to the cryptocurrency world (and was from EthereumMax).
On stage, Mr. Dorsey was confronted by Laura Lumière , a conspiracy theorist who had gone to the company’s headquarters in 2018 after his Twitter account was blocked and handcuffed himself to the building. Dorsey bravely described his protest at the time. When Lumer told the Bitcoin conference that Twitter’s CEO was the ” king of censorship ,” Dorsey said he hoped he could take the company ‘s focus away from Twitter and make it as open and decentralized as Bitcoin.
Dorsey talked a lot about bitcoin at the conference. In fact, he talked more about Bitcoin than he did about Twitter and Square. He predicted that bitcoin would replace banks , create many economic opportunities for entrepreneurs in developing countries, and encourage incentives to invest in renewable energy . “Bitcoin changes absolutely everything,” Dorsey said. “I do not think I have anything more important [than bitcoin] in my life that I want to work on.”
Five months later, Dorsey took to Twitter to announce that she was changing her name to Square. The company that until then provided payment services to local coffee shops and other small businesses was called Block . This name undoubtedly reminds us of the main technology of cryptocurrencies, namely blockchain . Block officially became Dorsey’s full-time job, but everyone who knew him – including more than 30 current and former employees – knew that his main interest was in Bitcoin.
Jack Dorsey is the spiritual leader of Bitcoin
For the past two years, Jack Dorsey has acted as the spiritual leader and public defender of the market’s largest digital currency. He has repeatedly spoken out in support of Bitcoin on his Twitter page, criticizing those who advocate for rival cryptocurrencies. In 2021, Dorsey attended another cryptocurrency conference with Ilan Musk, saying that bitcoin could bring ” world peace .”
Dorsey’s personal interest changed the course of the block. The company now allows users to buy bitcoins through their smartphones. In addition, Block has now invested $ 220 million in bitcoin. Dorsey as a manager may have made mistakes, but as a futurist he has rarely made mistakes. A former Twitter employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Jack Dorsey would never join a group he did not want to lead.
The best source for information about Dorsey’s thoughts is his personal Twitter page. Of course, these posts can sometimes be a bit cryptic. For example, the day before he resigned as Twitter CEO, he wrote in a post: “I love Twitter.” If we look more closely at Dorsey’s personal page, we can guess that his serious interest in Bitcoin was formed a month after his trip to Africa in November 2019 . Since then, we have been witnessing various Dorsey tweets about Bitcoin.
The Twitter CEO made stops in Ethiopia , Ghana , Nigeria and South Africa . He met with local entrepreneurs and found that many of them were building bitcoin-focused companies. After the trip, Dorsey was convinced that the cryptocurrency could transform the continent’s financial systems. “I am sad to be leaving the continent right now,” he tweeted on his way back from Africa at Addis Ababa Airport. Africa will define the future (especially the future of bitcoin ). “I’m not sure where, but I will live here for three to six months by mid-2020.”
Shareholder pressures on Twitter management style
Dorsey already supported the idea of telecommuting, but spending half a year in a country across the world surprised Twitter employees and gave a good excuse to one of Dorsey’s business rivals, Paul Singer . Singer was the founder of Elliott Management and was known for investing in public companies and then pressuring them to make managerial changes. Elliott invested heavily in Twitter around the time of Dorsey’s trip, buying more than $ 1 billion in shares.
In a February 2020 letter to the board of directors, Elliott pointed to some of the company’s business and management problems and warned that he wanted to nominate four new board members. One of Elliott’s main protests was the division of CEO time with his second company. Dorsey’s tweet was not the only motivation for this, but it created a good opportunity to attack the CEO, as Dorsey did not seem interested in working on Twitter.
The social network reconciled with Elliott a month later and brought in three new members to its board, one of whom was Jesse Kahn of Elliott . Also, changes were made in the management of the company. Eventually, Dorsey was not fired, but his job was still under threat. In part, he agreed to increase the number of Twitter users and the company’s revenue.
With the onset of the Corona virus outbreak, Dorsey’s migration to Africa was suspended, but even the epidemic could not stop him from behaving strangely as CEO. He had traveled extensively to Hawaii , but was occasionally seen in Costa Rica and French Polynesia . Of course, no one really knew where he lived, and the staff could only guess where Dorsey was from the background of the video calls.
His strange behavior continued. At a time when the world was in turmoil in April 2020, Dorsey read a text from Dr. Zeus’ book “Happy Birthday” at a Google Mate meeting, which read: “You are today, the one who is the truth It is more real. “None of the living is like you.” Dorsey held the book up to the camera and flipped through it. That day, it was Dorsey’s turn to read a children’s book to employees and their children in a weekly video call with senior Twitter executives .
This call showed Dorsey well and was a testament to her ability to make her employees happy. When Dorsey returned to Twitter in 2015 , he removed the platform used in public meetings with company personnel so that he would not be taller than the staff. At the beginning of the epidemic, he implemented the ” rest days ” plan so that employees could go on more leave and regulate their mental state. Dorsey even occasionally brings his family to attend meetings. A former employee of Block says that one day, when he had gone to his bedroom last night due to fatigue from too much work, he saw Dorsey and while the employee was preparing for reprimand, he realized that the CEO of the company asked him to continue sleeping. Give.
Jack Dorsey did not like the concentration of power
However, some were concerned about Dorsey’s lack of attention to the company’s situation. Five days after he read Dr. Zeus’ book, a report said the company’s revenue was disappointing . As the company’s first man, Jack Dorsey was reluctant to use power. Those who worked under him say Dorsey did not like decision -making and saw it as synonymous with management failure.
The Twitter CEO does not speak more than a few words in many meetings. He preferred to leave employees with in-depth questions and give general instructions instead of giving detailed instructions. Dorsey’s views on power also influenced his views on Twitter. “I know I’m a little guilty, and I’m sorry about that,” he wrote in a recent post saying that companies ‘ control of online content and user authentication was wrong .
People who worked in the Dorsey complex often felt empowered to make decisions because of his management style, but uncertainty in the way he worked left some employees tired and some processes interrupted. One of the reasons that small changes, such as increasing the number of characters per tweet to 280, took so long , was Dorsey’s reluctance to make the decision.
This management style even caused Square to miss out on many opportunities, such as buying Plaid . The company wanted to buy Plaid in 2018 for less than $ 1 billion , and most of the company’s top executives were in favor of the deal. But Dorsey refused to make the decision, telling his team that they themselves must somehow reach a consensus. Eventually, Square executives disagreed and the deal failed. Plaid is now worth more than $ 13 billion .
A manager with a high ability to predict the future
Nevertheless, Dorsey was very good at predicting the future . He could have been aware of the emergence of trends and products much earlier than the rest. He was the originator of Twitter and Square and created the Cash App , a consumer payment service similar to Venmo or People. The app was initially loss-making, but now has 44 million monthly users, generating more than half of the company’s profits in 2021.
Jack Dorsey was one of Instagram ‘s first investors, and he realized the potential of the app before most people knew what an image filter was. He wanted to buy Vine for Twitter in 2012 , and although the app eventually failed, his TickTack counterpart became a global success, becoming one of the world’s most popular social networks.
Jack Dorsey fans have a similar view of his keen interest in bitcoin. “I always pay attention to Jack [Dorsey]’s predictions about the future,” said Jackie Reese, formerly Squire Banking and Lending Business Manager, who now owns his own fintech startup. “He often has the right predictions.”
In fact, Dorsey has been interested in cryptography since she was a teenager . At the time, he was joining Usenet chat groups, including alt.cypherpunks. Dorsey read it in 2008, shortly after the release of Bitcoin White Paper , and later said it thought it looked like a poetic text .
Dorsey did not value bitcoin as a mere cryptocurrency or method of storage. He believed that this technology could transform the entire financial system and replace banks and other intermediaries. He said at the B Word conference in June 2021 that bitcoin had the chance to replace all foundations.
Twitter’s stock price broke a record in February 2021, but two months later a report was released announcing the company’s sluggish earnings. When Dorsey left Twitter in November, he tried to explain in a letter to employees that the management of a company by its founder could be a constraint and a factor in failure . He said he wanted to free Twitter from its fundamental principles and founders.
Those who knew Jack Dorsey knew that he was tired of Elliott’s constant pressure, and another bad financial season meant more attacks. The social network conducted several small experiments with blockchain technology during Dorsey. He tried to create a decentralized version of Twitter and allowed users to fund content creators with bitcoins. But these measures were not enough for Dorsey, and he eventually realized that Square was better suited for these projects.
What is the purpose of the block?
Square, which recently made its name to the block, introduced bitcoin to almost all of its businesses. A unit called TBD built a system to convert dollars into bitcoins. Another project called Spiral was created to improve and market the biggest cryptocurrencies on the market. Block now works on bitcoin mining chips and hardware wallets . The company also wants to mine bitcoins in Texas in partnership with Blackstream and Tesla .
In late 2021, Dorsey agreed to buy Tidal Music Streaming for $ 300 million . A few months later, Afterpay was added to the blockchain for $ 29 billion. Square was even allowed to offer small business loans to customers in 2020. Former employees of the company say that Dorsey’s strategy in the field of blockchain services was inspired by Walt Disney Company .
In a 2015 meeting with investors, Block executives presented a chart showing Disney businesses, including cinemas, commercial goods, and amusement parks. They said that just as every Disney business is connected to the other businesses of the company, Block’s products and services reinforce each other .
Of course, bitcoin is also an important part of this plan. Dorsey believes that these cryptocurrencies will eventually become very popular in the online space, and it is natural that Block should be ready for it. Dorsey, on the other hand, has not invested heavily in other digital coins or Web 3 projects that use blockchain. He thinks bitcoin is the only real cryptocurrency for the world, and Web 3 is an attempt by corporate investors to control and destroy the scene.
Alex Goldstein, chief strategist at the Bitcoin Human Rights Foundation, spoke to Dorsey in Miami. “If he had said ‘Ramzarz, Ramzarz, Ramzarz, Web 3,’ we would not have been able to call him unique at all. The important thing is that he has put all his focus on bitcoin,” he said of Block’s CEO.
Goldstein is a big fan of Bitcoin, which inspires Dorsey’s ideas. “I’m definitely glad he’s there and he’s doing his job,” he says. “I think in the end he will be remembered more than Twitter with bitcoin .
“Source: Bloomberg
