Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and musician Jay-Z pledged 500 bitcoin (about $ 23.3 million) to usttrust, a grant to fund bitcoin development. Dorsey announced on Twitter today. The CEO says the development will initially be focused on teams in Africa and India, but that he and Jay-Z intend to give the plans a zero direction. ₿trust is currently looking for three executives, with an application form noting that its goal is to make bitcoin the internet’s currency.
Africa and India are two interesting markets on which bitcoin development can be focused. As TechCrunch notes that cryptocurrencies have become increasingly popular throughout the African continent because they have made cross-border transactions cheaper and in some cases have resisted government control. Nigeria is reportedly second only to the US in terms of the amount of bitcoin traded in the country over the past five years.
JAY-Z /@S_C_ and I donate 500 BTC to a new donation called ₿trust to finance # Bitcoin development, initially focused on teams in Africa and India. It will be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, which will take no direction from us. We need 3 board members to get started: https://t.co/L4mRBryMJe
– jack (@jack) 12 February 2021
Meanwhile, the Indian government currently wants to ban private cryptocurrencies in the country, Bloomberg reports, while also investigating the creation of an official digital currency. TechCrunch notes that the development of cryptocurrencies in the country has been slow, despite the strengths in software development.
Dorsey has been a longtime supporter of cryptocurrency, and this is reflected in the actions of its companies. Its payment platform company Square has been accepting bitcoin as a means of payment since 2014, announcing that it bought $ 50 million in bitcoin last year as an investment in cryptocurrency.
At the time, Square said it believed bitcoin could be the currency of the future and that cryptocurrency was an “instrument of economic empowerment”. Earlier this week, Twitter’s chief financial officer said the company has been looking at how it could pay employees or sellers in bitcoin in the future.
Trust is the second major bitcoin investment to be announced this week. Tesla said on Monday it had invested $ 1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency and hoped to use it as a payment method in the near future.