Twitter’s Jack Dorsey in a Dilemma After Google Crypto-Ad Ban
After Google officially joined Facebook in an internet-wide crackdown on crypto-related ads, the CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, may feel compelled to do the same. It would be a much simpler decision were he not the CEO of a financial services company which is eyeing crypto-investments after beginning to offer Bitcoin trading recently.
Square, Inc. is a financial services, merchant services aggregator, and mobile payment company that introduced Bitcoin trading earlier this year, a move that came as some companies had begun to distance themselves from the risky digital-currency market. Dorsey also said in a conference call with Market Watch, “Bitcoin, for us, is not stopping at buying and selling. We do believe that this is a transformational technology for our industry, and we want to learn as quickly as possible.”
So now, especially after the verified scam accounts fiasco, Dorsey should be following the lead of other internet giants by banning any crypto-related talk. Users are understandably fed up with tweets promoting scammy ICOs and giving (often bad) financial advice to would-be crypto investors. After it was discovered that the TRON Foundation had their account imitated by a scammer with a verified ticker next to their handle, Dorsey tweeted simply, “Yes, we discovered this and are fixing process.”
But while Dorsey may give in to the pressure from the public to take measures against these situations – something that would be considered reassuring, no matter how hard to implement – his involvement with Square Inc. could pull him in the other direction.
“The billionaire’s Twitter hat will pressure him to pacify regulators and reduce crypto-hype, even if we don’t exactly know how much is at stake in terms of revenue. But his Square hat might push him into riskier Bitcoin territory, because that’s where the fintech money is. Even Dorsey’s own tweets reflect a split personality, sometimes promoting Square’s Bitcoin products, sometimes Twitter’s commitment to civility,” Lionel Laurent, a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist, wrote in a recent opinion piece.
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