Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have exploded back into the limelight in recent months, given a boost by the Federal Reserve’s coronavirus pandemic response.
The bitcoin price, after crashing in March along with most other assets, quickly bounced back—but has recently fallen again, inline with technology stocks.
Now, billionaire boss of both micro-blogging platform Twitter and payments company Square
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of both Twitter and Square, has previously espoused his love of bitcoin and … [+]
“The internet is something that is consensus-driven and is built by everyone, and anyone can change the course of it. Bitcoin has the same patterns, it was built on the internet,” Dorsey told newswire Reuters in an interview last week. “Any one with a great idea can add to it.”
Dorsey spoke to Reuters just as his company Square announced it’s inviting other cryptocurrency firms to join an “‘alliance” that will pool patents and preserve the industry’s open-source spirit, called the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA).
“We believe there needs to be a global native currency for the internet. Just as everyone should be able to participate in the economy and have access to the same tools and services, so too should everyone be able to participate in cryptocurrencies and have access to its underlying innovation,” COPA, which is an entirely separate entity from Square, with its own independent board of directors, wrote in a statement, adding “offensive and misguided use of patents threatens the growth and adoption of emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies.”
The number of U.S. cryptocurrency and blockchain-related patents doubled between 2016 and 2017 with software and computing giants Microsoft and IBM both filing patents. China’s tech and retail giant Alibaba
Any company that works in crypto, regardless of whether it has patents or not, will be eligible to join COPA.
“Square is putting all of our crypto patents into a new non-profit [organization], Dorsey said via Twitter. Last month, Square revealed its popular Cash App brought generated $875 million in bitcoin-related revenue in the second quarter of 2020.
Dorsey has repeatedly endorsed bitcoin over recent years, going as far as to claim bitcoin has the potential to become the world’s sole currency by 2030 in a 2018 interview with the Times of London.
“I think the internet wants a native currency and I think bitcoin is probably the best manifestation of that so far,” Dorsey said this week, adding that he sees Square’s role as “a tool maker” that should “make it easy for people to understand and, most importantly, make it easy for people to utilize [bitcoin].”
However, Dorsey thinks that there is still work to be done before bitcoin and cryptocurrency achieves wider, mainstream adoption; pointing to “transaction times and efficiency” and ease of use as needing improvement.
“We have to build bitcoin in such a way that it as intuitive, it’s as fast and it’s efficient as what exists today, and goes beyond that too,” he said.