The division will be known as Twitter Crypto and report to its CTO
Twitter is building a new division for “all things blockchain at Twitter,” called Twitter Crypto, and has hired Tess Rinearson as the team’s engineering lead to “set the strategy for the future of crypto at (and on) Twitter,” the company said in a release Wednesday.
“First, we’ll be exploring how we can support the growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies, and to support their work and communities,” Rinearson said on Twitter. “Looking farther ahead, we’ll be exploring how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community, ownership and more.” She added that her team would be working closely with Bluesky, an independent Twitter-funded effort to create a decentralized social network standard.
Rinearson will work under Twitter chief technology officer Parag Agrawal, and their to-be-hired team will help drive Twitter’s push toward decentralizing social media, the company said. The company says there is “massive and growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies,” and Rinearson will be focused on those issues, “with a long term goal of exploring how ideas from crypto can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community and more.”
In September, Twitter announced it was enabling creators on its platform to be tipped in Bitcoin, and the company says it will explore crypto payments for other features like its Ticketed Spaces, the company said, as “not all people want or are able to accept traditional currencies.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also CEO of financial services firm Square, has been a vocal proponent of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin in particular. He displayed a Bitcoin clock while testifying before Congress in March and opened a new Bitcoin business unit for Square called TBD in July.
