Social Media Heavyweights Weigh in on Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, and ICOs

In the wake of the current market crash, there are still a few points of optimism to lean on. While Facebook turns its back on much of the crypto scene with its most recent ban, Twitter seems eager to accept bitcoin’s tenants with open arms.

Greater Financial Access for All

Spoken like a true bitcoin evangelist, CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey offered praise for the pioneer cryptocurrency on January 31, 2018. In Dorsey’s tweet, he endorses bitcoin insofar as it can give “greater financial access for all.” In the same tweet, Dorsey also announced Square’s move to make available “instant buying (and selling, if you don’t want to hodl) of bitcoin.”

Instant buying (and selling, if you don’t want to hodl) of Bitcoin is now available to most Cash App customers. We support Bitcoin because we see it as a long-term path towards greater financial access for all. This is a small step.

We also made this! https://t.co/z3u0liDNk4

— jack (@jack) January 31, 2018

The link to “My First Bitcoin and the Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto” leads interested parties along a child-like foray into how bitcoin works. Coupled with portions of text and psychedelic illustrations, readers learn about “the radically new way to transact and store value all around the world.”

If in his tweet, Dorsey was referring to the two billion unbanked adults in the world, then the story of Satoshi may be setting the bar slightly higher.

The cryptocurrency market is in demand of more easy-to-use on-ramps for new users. At current, Coinbase stands as one of the most successful and highly-adopted services. But like Dorsey, many fintech entrepreneurs are interested in getting a slice of Coinbase’s one billion dollar revenue.

Market Response to Cryptocurrencies

Robinhood, for instance, has already shown its capacity to disrupt Brian Armstrong’s revenue stream. The American based fee-less trading platform boasted over a million early sign ups since its announcement to join the crypto sphere.

Facebook, on the other hand, is content to stay sidelined amidst the mania. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s nod to cryptocurrencies in a post on January 4, 2018, the founder of the world’s largest social media platform has indeed found a way to control the uncontrollable.

Taken directly from his musings on the subject earlier this month, he explained that “one of the most interesting questions in technology right now is about centralization vs decentralization.”

Later in the text he cites virtual currencies outright, thus sparking massive speculation into whether Facebook is looking into some form of adoption:

“There are important counter-trends to this –like encryption and cryptocurrency — that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control.”

A few weeks later, on January 30, 2018, Facebook then announced a broad and ambiguous ban on all “ads that promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices, such as binary options, initial coin offerings and cryptocurrency.”

Rob Leathern, the Product Management Director of Facebook, did however iterate that the company will “will revisit the policy and how we enforce it as our signals improve.”