- Block CEO Jack Dorsey discussed bitcoin and stablecoins with Michael Saylor on Tuesday.
- He said he believed Facebook should have spent time making bitcoin more accessible to its users.
- Since leaving Twitter, Dorsey has made bitcoin the focus of his attention, renaming Square to Block.
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In his first interview for some time, Square chief executive Jack Dorsey said Facebook should have spent more time focussing on making bitcoin accessible to its users, rather than on its own stablecoin project.
Facebook, now known as Meta, has ditched its diem stablecoin project and is in the process of selling off assets. The project launched back in 2019 under the name "libra", but failed to take off, even after a rebranding exercise, due to regulatory issues.
"This whole thing with libra and then diem, I think there's a ton of lessons there. Hopefully they learned a lot, but I think there was a lot of wasted effort and time," Dorsey told Michael Saylor on Tuesday at MicroStrategy's "Bitcoin for Corporations 2022" conference, he spoke
In particular, the Block CEO said he felt the time spent on the diem project would have been better served working on bitcoin and improving access.
"Those two or three years or however long it's been could've been spent making bitcoin more accessible for more people around the world," he said.
This is one issue bitcoin faces at the moment which needs addressing, according to Dorsey. He said to improve this, there needs to be more focus on bitcoin from companies like Facebook. He said he also believed that this had been Facebook's original plan with libra.
"We have this open network right now. And it's usable. It's not accessible to everyone, but it's usable. The easier we make it, the faster we make it, the more approachable we make it, it's going to better everything. Including everything Facebook intended to do with libra," Dorsey said.
Since the announcement of his departure from Twitter in November, Dorsey has gone ever deeper into the crypto world, even renaming his Square payments company, which facilitates bitcoin purchases through Cash App, to Block.
Block has been feverishly signing partnerships with celebrities and sports stars to promote bitcoin. In that time, Aaron Rodgers, Odel Beckham Jr. and two Golden State Warriors stars have opted to take part of their salaries in bitcoin as part of this push.
Dorsey recently engaged in several Twitter spats with VCs over the future of web3 as he fervently argues for bitcoin.
—jack⚡️ (@jack) December 21, 2021
As well as his work on Block and his Twitter spat, Dorsey has set up a bitcoin legal defense fund with other crypto enthusiasts in order to protect and support developers building on the network.