Jack Dorsey says Square may build a hardware Bitcoin wallet
The Twitter and Square CEO says the project would be "entirely in the open."
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Jack Dorsey speaks on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention in Miami, Florida.
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square, on Friday said his digital payments company is considering building a hardware wallet for Bitcoin. If the company goes forward with the project, Dorsey said it will be built "entirely in the open, from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community."
Dorsey shared guiding principles for the possible Bitcoin wallet in a thread on Twitter and also discussed it during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami on Friday.
"We're considering building a noncustodial hardware wallet. And the thing we want to do is make it completely in the open, from all of our software to all of our hardware design would be open-sourced," Dorsey said at the conference on Friday. "We want to build it in collaboration with the community."
Square is considering making a hardware wallet for #bitcoin. If we do it, we would build it entirely in the open, from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community. We want to kick off this thinking the right way: by sharing some of our guiding principles.
— jack (@jack) June 4, 2021
Square already lets people buy and sell the digital coin via its Cash app. Dorsey, who has been a vocal advocate of Bitcoin, said Square is likely to start work on a Bitcoin wallet "some time very soon."
Bitcoin wallets are used to store cryptocurrency and have a private key for security. Hardware wallets are considered among the most secure, since they store Bitcoin in a physical device that can be plugged into a computer or phone. Dorsey said Square's wallet, if built, would be different from alternatives because it would give people more control over their Bitcoin.
"The exchange you used to buy your bitcoin probably attends to your security with good intent, but circumstances may reveal 'custody' actually means 'IOU,'" Dorsey said in a tweet. "Deciding to take custody, and security, of your bitcoin is complicated."
During his talk at the conference, Dorsey was also heckled by Laura Loomer, a right-wing provocateur who was banned from Twitter in 2018 for violating the platform's rules on hateful conduct. After Loomer began shouting about censorship and freedom of speech on Twitter, Dorsey pointed to the company's Bluesky project, which aims to develop a "decentralized standard for social media" inspired by Bitcoin.
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