Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey is a Bitcoin believer, but the social network’s CFO has no intention of following the payments firm’s lead by putting corporate dollars into crypto.
Twitter won’t be investing any of its corporate treasury in Bitcoin, the social network’s chief financial officer said.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal on November 15, Twitter CFO Ned Segal said investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin “doesn’t make sense right now.”
The reason, he said, is that crypto assets are far too volatile, adding that the company prefers to hold assets like securities that aren’t subject to the wild price fluctuations of Bitcoin — which routinely rises and falls as much as 5% or even 10% in a day.
To add Bitcoin to its balance sheet, Twitter would “have to change our investment policy,” he said, adding that the company preferred to hold less volatile assets like securities.
Notably, Twitter’s Bitcoin-boosting CEO Jack Dorsey’s other company, payments firm Square, invested $220 million of its corporate treasury in bitcoin in the last half of 2020. And it’s done very well: Bitcoin ranged from $10,000 to $30,000 in that period, compared with about $60,000 at press time.
However, Square had already invested a great deal in BTC in a somewhat less direct fashion, allowing users of its Cash App to hold and trade Bitcoin in their account wallets as early as January 2018.
That investment paid off handsomely, as Square saw bitcoin transaction fees add $1.8 billion to the firm’s revenue in Q3 2021.
Onboarding Crypto
Twitter might not be buying Bitcoin, but it’s investing heavily in crypto more broadly. Three months ago, Dorsey said:
“I think it's hugely important to Twitter and to Twitter shareholders that we continue to look at the space and invest aggressively in it.”
Among other things, this includes allowing Twitter users to use BTC to tip and subscribe to tweeters whose feeds they follow.
And just last week, Twitter hired a cryptocurrency industry veteran to create and lead a new Twitter Crypto team tasked with developing its strategy for integrating crypto into its operations, both internally and for Twitter users.
