In Brief:
- Jack Dorsey criticized the troubled cryptocurrency project Diem saying, Meta should have focused on Bitcoin instead
- He also said that Diem was created for the “right reasons,” but wasn’t open enough like Bitcoin.
Twitter Founder and Block Inc. CEO Jack Dorsey criticized Meta’s failed cryptocurrency project, Diem, calling it “wasted effort and time”. He went on to say that Zuckenberg should have focused its efforts on “making Bitcoin more accessible for everyone.”
Dorsey said that Meta’s attempts to make Diem (formerly known as Libra) an emerging cryptocurrency came to an end this week. He explained that Diem wasn’t open enough, and Meta was too focused on driving people to its own suite of products, like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Dorsey said Tuesday at the MicroStrategy “Bitcoin for Corporations 2022” conference, “They tried to create a currency that was owned by Facebook — probably for the right reasons, probably for noble reasons — but there were also some reasons that would indicate trying to get more and more people onto the Facebook ecosystem,” he also stated that, they should have used an open-ended protocol and standard like Bitcoin rather than creating its own currency.
He further said that this whole thing with Libra and then Diem has a ton of lessons there. Hopefully, they have learned a lot, but according to him, it was a lot of wasted time and effort.
Since stepping down from his role as Twitter CEO in November last year, he has been constantly working on his plan to make Bitcoin the focus of his new company Block (formerly known as Square). Recently, Jack Dorsey confirmed plans that the firm is building an open bitcoin mining system.
His criticism came as no surprise when he said. “Those two years or three years, or however long it’s been, could have been spent making Bitcoin more accessible for more people around the world, which would also benefit their Messenger product and Instagram and WhatsApp.”