Jack Dorsey leaves Twitter for second time

Jack Dorsey, who was mused at a packed Miami conference in June, said that if I wasn't on Square or Twitter, I'd be working onBitcoin. On Monday, Dorsey made good on one part of that, announcing he would leave Twitter for the second time, handing the CEO position to a 10 year veteran at the firm. According to a source familiar with his plan, the 45-year-old entrepreneur, who is often described as an enigma with varied interests from meditation to yoga to fashion design, plans to pursue his passions, which include running Square Inc and doing more philanthropic work.

Dorsey had laid the groundwork for his next chapter, seeding both companies with projects related to cryptocurrencies, before the surprise news.

Dorsey's vision is that of decentralization, or the idea that technology and finance should not be concentrated among a handful of gatekeepers, but should instead be directed by the hands of the many, either people or entities.

The concept has been developed at Square, which has built a division dedicated to working on projects and awarding grants with the aim of increasing the popularity of bitcoins around the world.

Dorsey has been a longtime proponent of the digital currency, and the appeal is that it will allow for private and secure transactions with the value ofBitcoin unrelated to any government.

The idea has underpinned new projects at Twitter, where Dorsey tapped a top lieutenant - and now the company's new CEO Parag Agrawal - to oversee a team that is attempting to build a decentralized social media protocol that will allow different social platforms to connect with one another, similar to how email providers operate.

Bluesky will allow users to control the types of content they see on the internet, removing the burden on companies like Twitter to enforce a global policy to fight abuse or misleading information, Dorsey said in 2019 when he announced Bluesky.

Both of his companies have prominently figured out the importance of the digital currency. Square has invested $220 million in the coin, one of the first public companies to own assets on its balance sheet.

In August, Square created a new business unit called TBD to focus onBitcoin. The company is planning to build a hardware wallet for bitcoins, a mining system, and a decentralized exchange of digital currency.

It allows people to share unique digital art with non-fungible tokens, such as NFTs, and has been testing integrations with other digital assets with the help of Twitter.

Analysts see the transition as a positive signal for Square, the fintech platform he co-founded in 2009. In the past quarter, Square's core Cash App, after a bull run in its share in 2020, has experienced slower growth. It is trying to digest the $29 billion acquisition of Buy Now Pay Later provider Afterpay, its largest acquisition ever.

But these ambitions won't pay off until years from now, analysts cautioned.

The platform they're trying to develop is great, but it's also fraught with technical challenges and difficult to scale for consumers. Christopher Brendler, an analyst at DA Davidson said he'll focus more on Square and that he'll be part of that.