The founder of Twitter and Square has come out and said that bitcoin will become the world’s single currency in 10 years.
Speaking to The Times, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and payments company Square, said that cryptocurrencies using the blockchain would be the next major breakthrough.[1]
“The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be bitcoin,” he said.
He added that it could take place within the next 10 years; however, it could happen faster than that.
Currently in London to promote Square, which was brought to the U.K. last year and already enables its U.S. customers to buy and sell bitcoin through its app, Dorsey did concede that right now bitcoin doesn’t have the ‘capabilities’ to become an ‘effective currency.’
At the moment bitcoin is facing a number of hurdles – such as a call for regulation – that is pushing its price down. At the time of publishing it’s trading at $9,133, according to CoinMarketCap; however, compared to its all-time high of over $19,000 at the end of December, bitcoin still has a lot of ground to cover. Yet despite this Dorsey is of the opinion that the cryptocurrency will overcome the challenges it faces to be the currency of choice for everyday purchases.[2]
As a bitcoin investor Dorsey’s comments come after it was revealed last week that he is among the new investors in Lightning Labs, a startup that aims to make bitcoin transactions cheaper and faster. According to data provider Crunchbase, this is Dorsey’s first investment in a digital currency company, further deepening his interest in the cryptocurrency sector.[3][4]
The idea behind Lightning is to address Bitcoin’s scaling issues. Using The Lightning Network a user can open a channel off-chain to make their payments there, instead of on the public ledger. As the payments are off-chain it’s expected that they will be cheaper and quicker, potentially solving the bottleneck problems that bitcoin suffers from at present.
“[Bitcoin] is slow and it’s costly, but as more and more people have it, those things go away,” said Dorsey. “There are newer technologies that build off of blockchain and make it more approachable.”
He obviously believes that Lightning Labs has the answer that could potentially help see bitcoin becoming the world’s single currency in the next decade. Earlier this week, it was reported that Twitter is to ban cryptocurrency advertising in two weeks in an attempt to curb misleading adverts related to the industry. The company is following in the footsteps of Facebook and Google who have announced similar measures.[5]
References
- ^ The Times (www.thetimes.co.uk)
- ^ call for regulation (coinjournal.net)
- ^ new investors in Lightning Labs (qz.com)
- ^ Crunchbase (www.crunchbase.com)
- ^
