By John Ikani
Twitter has in an unexpected and surprising move announced a new team dedicated to working with crypto and blockchain.
The company says it wants to “figure out what crypto can do for Twitter” and that it will invest even more in decentralized technology.
Tess Rinearson, the boss tasked with leading Twitter’s new cryptocurrency team announced this on wednessday via the bird app.
“As I build out the team, we’ll be working to figure out what crypto can do for Twitter, as well as what Twitter can do for crypto. Twitter truly “gets” crypto (hello bitcoin tipping & NFTs!) but there’s so much more to explore here,” she wrote.
Prior to joining Twitter, Rinearson worked at Tendermint on the consensus engine Tendermint Core, worked at the software payments firm Interstellar and is a council member of the Interchain Foundation.
According to her, the crypto team she now leads will focus on in the short term. The first focus area for the team will be to grow decentralised apps (dApps) for creators to manage virtual goods, currencies, and ways for their fans to support their community.
She added that her team will then try and look to crypto tech to augment identity, community, and ownership on Twitter.
In addition, Rinearson notes that her team will collaborate with Bluesky, Twitter’s decentralised social networking project to “help shape the future of decentralized social media”. Things appear to be falling into place for the social media giant that also appointed Jay Graber, the creator of Happening, to lead its Bluesky initiative in August.
What you should know
This is not the first time Twitter has publicly confirmed that it is working to support cryptocurrencies.
The addition of the crypto team comes more than a month after Twitter implemented a method to tip creators with Bitcoin via the Lightning network and the evidence that they’re experimenting with ways to verify NFT used as profile pictures.
Back in September, Twitter product head Kayvon Beykpour corroborated a rumor about the company implementing Bitcoin transactions in Twitter’s Tip Jar. At the same time, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is openly supportive of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Twitter isn’t the only tech company to turn its attention to blockchain and cryptocurrency. Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that he owned crypto and said he had “been interested in it for a while” although he did add that Apple does not have a crypto roadmap yet.
It’s unclear when Twitter’s first crypto and blockchain-related projects will be officially announced, but we will probably learn more about them really soon.
