BTC is the only tool to create a better future

Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey discussed in detail the global application of BTC with Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation.

At the 2021 Bitcoin Conference in Miami, the author of this article interviewed Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on issues such as BTC's global adoption, currency, and the future of social media. The following is the interview content.

Alex Gladstein: Hello Miami! Welcome Jack Dorsey! 12,000 BTC enthusiasts here.

Jack Dorsey: Hello!

Alex Gladstein: I think 20,000 people are watching the livestream. We are very happy to see more and more people paying attention to BTC. I want to start with an important question that most people might ask, which is why are you sharing the stage with a human rights activist? What is the relationship between BTC and human rights? Is BTC more than just an investment?

Jack Dorsey: I certainly don't think so. For me, BTC has absolutely changed everything. What attracts me most is the spirit, connotation and environment of its birth, which are very rare attributes and very precious qualities. I think that in life, nothing is more important than benefiting the world.

Alex Gladstein: We often hear in the community that BTC belongs to the people. BTC is open to everyone around the world, and some people cannot trade, save, or connect with the world. What do you think about BTC belonging to the world?

Jack Dorsey: That's what I'm focused on so that I can do my part in this. Whatever I can do, whatever my company can do, to get everyone using Bitcoin, that's my goal for the rest of my life. If I left Square or Twitter, I would be working on Bitcoin. If Bitcoin needed more help than Square and Twitter, I would leave the company and move to Bitcoin. But I believe both companies have a role to play.

Alex Gladstein: Today's topic is banking the unbanked. As you probably all know, there are billions of people in the world who are unbanked or underbanked. However, the number of mobile phones is growing at an incredible rate. Even in countries like Ethiopia and Sudan, 20%-25% of the population now has a mobile phone, and in the next five years, this number will exceed 50%. So what we have now is that new technologies are emerging, more people are able to use the Internet, regardless of nationality, race, or faith, they can use the BTC network. So when it comes to banking the unbanked, what do you think is the most important condition to get more people to use BTC?

Jack Dorsey: We don't need banks anymore. There is still a lot of work to be done in popularizing and educating people about BTC so that people can form their own ideas. I also want to thank you for dispelling many people's doubts and giving sufficient reasons to support the widespread use of BTC. We don't need today's financial institutions. BTC is thriving, the system is very robust, and its ownership belongs to the community. The community will continue to promote the development of BTC. The BTC consensus is very fascinating. Over time, it can provide a wide range of banking services, which is a noble goal. BTC is so rare and unique, so we are willing to do everything to develop and protect BTC.

Alex Gladstein: You recently launched a new fund with Jay-Z, and you plan to donate 500 BTC to develop the BTC ecosystem in Africa and India. Can you talk about the vision of this fund and the plans for the next few years?

Jack Dorsey: In November 2019, I traveled around the African continent and went to Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Ghana. There, I only met with entrepreneurs, not people from the government or the media. I found that for local entrepreneurs, the primary issue was payment, and the most interesting thing was that they were studying BTC. I have seen reports that Nigeria is considering banning BTC, and I have also seen news that India is considering banning BTC, which reminds me of one thing, that is, we can use BTC to help development around the world. In order to achieve this, it is important for us to find developers on the African continent and let them keep their original work and conduct BTC research. I discussed this with Jay-Z. Jay-Z loves BTC and is very dedicated to what he loves. He is a BTC believer. He also believes that if a unified currency is to be created for the world, the currency must be able to develop worldwide. We should all work to narrow the local development gap. So now we are looking for a suitable development model for BTC, and BTC is a completely independent entity. I cannot control or direct its development. Once we find a development model, we will hire a leader to make BTC donations.

Alex Gladstein: Let's continue this discussion. Nigeria is a country of over 200 million people. Inflation is 15%. The country lags behind the world in both fintech and payments. When you travel around the world and visit different countries, you can understand how BTC can have a global impact that people on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or London may not be able to experience? What facts are people ignoring when they say Bitcoin has no social value?

Jack Dorsey: I don't think these people can feel the impact of BTC. They never leave New York. If you can go to Nigeria for a day and see how people live, the high inflation rate has led to a constant depreciation of income. If you travel to Ghana once, there are many immigrants from all over the African continent, and you see the same problems every day. The same is true in India.

Alex Gladstein: My suggestion is that these people should try to live with Sudanese pounds for six months before they tell us that BTC is useless. I think they will think the opposite. Today, it is estimated that 150 million to 200 million people have used BTC in some way, which is 2% to 2.5% of the world's population. I believe that by 2025, the number of people using BTC may reach 1 billion, and by 2030, it will definitely reach this goal. When so many people use BTC, there may be a situation where the main chain fees will become quite high if you pay with fiat currency. People in Nigeria or Sudan need to make small payments, and the transfer amount may be $5 or $10. How can BTC be expanded outside the main chain?

Jack Dorsey: There will definitely be more and more BTC users. I strongly support the BTC Lightning Network. I think BTC is an extremely attractive asset, but the Internet needs a native currency to support daily transactions. Everyone in the world can use it for daily transactions. So the only reason Square entered BTC is for this purpose. We do not get involved in any other currency or cryptocurrency, and focus on making BTC the native currency of the Internet.

Alex Gladstein: You announced a big project at Square. Can you talk about your thoughts on non-custodial use of BTC?

Jack Dorsey: We are considering making a non-custodial hardware wallet. What we want to do is a completely open source wallet, all software and hardware designs are open source, and will be published on github. We hope to work with the community to develop it. So we posted a post today asking some questions about design principles. We don't want to compete with existing hardware wallets. We just want to improve the wallet functionality and allow more than 100 million people who have non-custodial solutions to become its users. We may get there soon. But we have to make sure we think about this in the right way and find the right people in the community to build the wallet.

Alex Gladstein: I think non-custodial use of BTC is very important. Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of BTC, was very aware of this. Satoshi Nakamoto set his birthday as April 5th. On this day in 1933, the US government banned private ownership of gold. So when Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin, he thought about how the US government could collect and confiscate gold from people, and how to build a system to prevent this from happening. Satoshi Nakamoto chose 1973 as the year of his birthday, which was when the American people were able to buy gold again. So non-custodial use of BTC was Satoshi Nakamoto's vision. So it's really exciting to see Square support this. I think a lot of custodians in the crypto community will be unhappy.

Jack Dorsey: We need to push more companies to enable more people to have non-custodial solutions.

Alex Gladstein: Before, you said you only liked BTC. Now that the proof-of-stake mechanism and other cryptocurrencies have attracted a lot of attention, what advantages do you think BTC's proof-of-work mechanism and full-node operation mode have compared to other consensus mechanisms?

Jack Dorsey: I want to emphasize again that the conditions for the birth of BTC fascinate me. I think BTC is a unique cryptocurrency and no other cryptocurrency can match it. We want to create an Internet native currency and want to improve the status quo, so we are not interested in other cryptocurrencies.

Alex Gladstein: Essentially, the control of BTC is in the hands of users. Users control the BTC monetary policy. It is not a small group of people who control monetary policy. This is the real purpose of choosing BTC. We chose BTC to create an alternative to fiat currency, where the rules are determined by a small group of people. I attended a conference yesterday and met a man named Fodé Diop, who is from Senegal and told me a story in the late 1990s. At that time, he lived in a country that used CFA. CFA was the French colonial currency, and officials in Paris, France, had a great influence on the price of CFA. His father saved a lot of money for him to go to college, and the French decided to devalue CFA overnight. He could no longer pursue his dream. This is why Fodé Diop was so excited when he saw BTC later. He said, this is my escape from the fiat currency system. The essential difference between BTC and other cryptocurrencies is that users control monetary policy, and this will not change. Other cryptocurrencies may be controlled by a small group of people, and users can only hope that this group of people will do their job conscientiously.

Jack Dorsey: Once corruption arises, these people will not do their job conscientiously.

Alex Gladstein: People will always be tempted to continue to issue more coins to solve problems, but BTC is not affected by this situation.

Now, while we're on the subject of other digital currencies, I do want to talk to you about central bank digital currencies. Around the world, people seem to be slowly moving away from paper money and increasingly relying on their phones for banking. This obviously raises a lot of concerns about civil liberties. Even Christine Lagarde has said that a digital euro can't be truly fully private. And obviously, the Chinese government is actively pursuing a CBDC. It's a war on cash. What do you think about financial freedom and privacy in a world without paper money?

Jack Dorsey: I think all the CBDCs launched by central banks are meaningless. We have a better choice, which is BTC. We can get privacy and freedom through BTC. The more the government realizes the importance of privacy and freedom, the better the society will be.

Alex Gladstein: A lot of people say that BTC users are criminals. How do you respond to that? This view is like how people thought about crypto in the early 90s. The government doesn't want people to protect privacy. Fortunately, the cypherpunk movement has promoted the development of private communication tools such as Signal. When you talk to regulators or government officials, they will say that BTC is too risky and will hurt people. How do you respond?

Jack Dorsey: Their views feel like they are covering up something else. I don't actually hear a lot of those views from regulators. I think officials are just concerned about losing power.

Alex Gladstein: We hear a lot of people talking about Bitcoin's energy use issues. Square and Ark published a paper together describing how Bitcoin mining can incentivize the use of renewable energy, and mining may help unlock unused renewable energy around the world. Can you talk about why Bitcoin mining is good for people and the planet?

Jack Dorsey: From an economic perspective, miners must eventually make a profit. Access to cheap renewable energy maximizes profits. It's that simple. I fully believe that over time, Bitcoin now does incentivize people to use more renewable energy. People will also pay more attention to the source of renewable energy, so that unused energy can be freely discovered and provide value to billions of people around the world.

I think the development of BTC can benefit the whole world. That's what's incredible about it. Everyone in the world can benefit and gain value from it. We have to work hard to increase the use of BTC because BTC transactions can be made anywhere in the world, which is a very attractive tool. I will do my best to ensure that people all over the world can use BTC.

Alex Gladstein: BTC can serve everyone. This is the concept I want everyone here to understand. BTC does not discriminate against anyone. Anyone can use BTC. No one can stop us from using BTC. BTC is open to everyone and has open source code. As a human rights activist, I am grateful to companies such as Square for supporting BTC open source, non-custodial use, and Lightning Network. I am very grateful to Jack Dorsey for sharing his ideas. We all agree that BTC is the way forward.

Jack Dorsey: That’s right! BTC is the only tool to create a better future.