Jack Dorsey dislikes Facebook’s Libra, strictly against joining Libra

Although Facebook’s cryptocurrency project has garnered a lot of attention from the Silicon Valley giants, it failed to impress Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square. On being asked whether it will become a part of the Libra Association, Dorsey simply said, “hell no!” At a Twitter media event in New York City, Dorsey’s short answer shows his opinion towards Facebook’s Libra. He also said that Libra is not needed to democratize the financial ecosystem. Dorsey said:

Nothing within Libra had to be a cryptocurrency to do what they wanted to do. I don’t know if it’s a gimmick, but a cryptocurrency wasn’t necessary to make that work.

Although Dorsey dislikes Libra, he is one of the supporters of Bitcoin. His payment processing platform Square offers Bitcoin trading options. Speaking about Libra, he said: 

It’s not an internet open standard that was born on the internet. It was born out of a company’s intention, and it’s not consistent with what I personally believe and what I want our company to stand for.

He also criticized Mark Zuckerberg’s stance for Libra. Zuckerberg was continually speaking about subjects like freedom of speech, censorship and the role tech platforms in democracy to pave the way to launch Libra. Dorsey said: 

I fear that if we base too much in this one concept, we take away the ability to experiment and expand. We are not just serving an American audience, we are serving a global audience […] The internet is somewhat of an emerging nation-state.

Recently, seven high-profile members of the Libra Association, including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Stripe, left the consortium to avoid negative backlash. However, Facebook’s crypto subsidiary head stated that 1,500 companies are in line to join Libra, of which 180 matches the standards of the consortium.