Twitter Is Establishing a Whole New Division Devoted to Crypto

Popular social media giant Twitter has announced that it is developing a whole new division devoted entirely to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Twitter Is Building Its Own Crypto Department

The department—known as Twitter Crypto—will focus on several growing aspects of the digital currency space including crypto payments, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized services. A company spokesperson explained in an interview:

Blockchain and crypto are unlocking new possibilities that align with many of our big product bets, including creator monetization and new forms of self-expression.

The division is set to be headed by a woman named Tess Rinearson, who has a long and elaborate history in the crypto space having worked with several digital currency startups including Tendermint and Interchain. She will report to Parag Agrawal, who serves as the chief technology officer of Twitter. In addition, the company is hiring for several engineering and product roles.

In a series of tweets, Rinearson said:

We’ll be exploring how we can support the growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies and to support their work and communities. Looking farther ahead, we’ll be exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community, ownership and more.

For the most part, the CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey has been a strong advocate of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, though many of his blockchain and crypto objectives have occurred through his other company Square, which is a digital payment firm.

Not long ago, Twitter unveiled a new service that would allow users to send bitcoin payments to other individuals. However, prior to this, Twitter has long been on the wrong side of crypto. For example, several scams have occurred on the platform involving the likeness of famous persons such as Elon Musk – the CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX – to garner crypto payments from helpless victims with phony promises.

This was witnessed roughly two summers ago when a teenager gained control of several Twitter accounts from high-end individuals such as former president Obama, Bill Gates, and – of course – Elon Musk. He put out messages to their followers saying that by sending their bitcoin to specific addresses, they would see their money doubled.

The Social Media Platform Has Not Always Been a Good Partner to Crypto

Sadly, this was not the case. Not only was the money not doubled, but the teenager wound up walking away with more than $120,000 in crypto funds. The teenager was later arrested and sentenced to time in a juvenile detention center for his actions.

Through Square, Dorsey became an institutional crypto investor by first buying about $50 million-worth of BTC two Octobers ago. From there, he added another $120 million to the company’s stash, meaning Square owned about $170 million in BTC at one point. Dorsey has also said he hopes bitcoin contributes to “world peace.”

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