No matter what the haters on its platform may say, Twitter clearly thinks cryptocurrency is more than just a passing fad. That much Twitter recently made clear with the announcement of both a new distributed technology-focused hire and the creation of a new crypto team. Tess Rinearson, a software engineer with a long history of developing blockchain tech, confirmed her new role as team lead in a thread explaining what she views as the natural fit between Twitter and distributed technology like the blockchain and Bitcoin.
Dorsey, a renowned bitcoin enthusiast, has long said he wants to integrate digital assets into Twitter’s future, after successfully introducing bitcoin support to the payments company Square that he also runs, two years ago. In September, Twitter said it was introducing a new tool that will allow users to send tips to others for their content using bitcoin. It also said it was creating a feature for verifying non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital collectibles that have exploded in popularity this year and that some Twitter users use as their profile pictures.
Working under Twitter’s chief technology officer Parag Agrawal, Rinearson is tasked with overseeing and building on these efforts, and an initiative to explore decentralizing social media more broadly. She has previously worked at crypto groups such as Interchain, a group focused on developing open-source decentralized technologies, and Interstellar, a decentralized crypto wallet and exchange.
Nevertheless, experts have questioned whether such efforts have the potential to cannibalize Twitter’s existing advertising-driven business model, while some investors consider Dorsey’s bitcoin fixation a distraction. Last year, Dorsey was forced to cancel a planned months-long trip to Africa to explore opportunities around cryptocurrencies, after New York activist investor Elliott Management agitated for him to be replaced as chief executive, citing corporate governance concerns.
Elliott and Twitter later struck a deal allowing Dorsey to remain at the helm on the condition he meet tougher performance targets. But there is a growing buzz in Silicon Valley around the web3 movement, which seeks to disrupt Big Tech companies that store user data on central servers and seek to monetise that data.
In the web3 ecosystem, by contrast, decentralised apps run on public blockchains, meaning data is not collected by any one party, while users can be offered token-based rewards for participating. Several social platforms alongside Twitter, such as Reddit and Discord, have hinted that they are also exploring ways to integrate with decentralised apps and embrace some of the concepts of web3 to their platforms.
“Twitter gets crypto, and its early integration of Bitcoin Tips and NFT authentication demonstrates that,” said Rinearson. “There’s so much more to explore to help people participate in the promise of an evolving, decentralised internet, directly on Twitter.”
Rinearson will also be part of Twitter’s Bluesky, an independent project funded by Twitter designed to find ways to decentralise social media in particular. The working group, made up of Twitter staffers as well as outside experts, is developing a single standard — or protocol — upon which social platforms and other developers can build more tailored offerings, with a view to making them more interoperable.
On top of that, developers might then create a marketplace of moderation algorithms or filters, at a time of intense debate over how user-generated content should be moderated. However, the project has prompted some scepticism, with experts suggesting it is untenable as it could hit Twitter’s business model, and is unlikely to gain traction with rivals.
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