Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, a noted superfan of Bitcoin, claimed on Monday that the cryptocurrency will eventually unite the world. Yes, really.
On Monday afternoon, an amendment to the Senate’s infrastructure package that would have expanded the government’s involvement in cryptocurrency was blocked. Shortly after that, Dorsey tweeted that “#Bitcoin will unite a deeply divided country. (and eventually: world).”
Dorsey didn’t specify which country, but given that he’s been tweeting a lot about the amendment since it failed, it seems likely he’s talking about the US. He hasn’t yet explained further.
This isn’t the first time Dorsey has touted Bitcoin as a vague solution to big problems. At a Bitcoin conference in July, he said that “my hope is that [Bitcoin] creates world peace.” He elaborated:
Elon said it earlier. We have all these monopolies of violence, and the individual doesn’t have power. The amount of cost and distraction that comes from our monetary system today is real, and it takes away attention from the bigger problems, some of the bigger problems that Elon is trying to solve — like getting us to multiplanetary humanity. All these distractions that we have to deal with on a daily basis take away from all those bigger goals that affect every single person on this planet, increasingly so. It may sound a little bit ridiculous, but you fix that foundational level and everything above it improves, in such a dramatic way. It’s gonna be long term, but my hope is definitely peace.
It remains unclear how Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency valued at more than $46,000 for a single coin and one that is mined at a massive cost to the environment, can help solve some of the world’s foundational problems.
Dorsey has been preaching the gospel of Bitcoin for some time now, displaying a Bitcoin clock while testifying before Congress, opening a new Bitcoin business unit for Square called TBD, and even suggesting in 2018 that Bitcoin will become the world’s “single currency” within 10 years. It seems likely he’ll continue to beat the drum of Bitcoin for the foreseeable future — maybe soon he’ll even let people buy ads on Twitter with it.