Coinster Thoughts: Pass the Torch
Our weekly editorial brought to you by a Coinme team member.
This week: Dom Garrett, Director of Engagement
Something pretty significant happened in CryptoTwitter this week, but before we dive in, I need to give a little backstory.
On January 19th, a social experiment called the “lightning torch” began on Twitter. The purpose is meant to show the value of bitcoin’s lightning network, the new tech that makes significant enhancements over today’s most widely used payment systems by enabling users to transfer money around the world quickly without a third party.
People are using the social network to “pass the torch” from one user to another while adding 10,000 satoshis (about $0.34) every time they pass it to the next user. Essentially, users are creating a satoshi snowball with more and more being added.
Since it’s inception, the torch has been passed to over 150 times to nearly 40 different countries, all while only accruing about $0.25 in total fees. That is a tenth of a fraction of what it would cost you to send just one transaction with PayPal.
The project got a bit more mainstream on Tuesday however when Twitter’s CEO himself, Jack Dorsey, took up the torch. Jack did not hold the torch for too long as he then passed it along to Elizabeth Stark, CEO of Lightning Labs, but he was sure to jump in and give some of his thoughts on bitcoin and why he owns the digital currency.
The entire digital currency industry is still feeling the effects of the hype cycle and unavoidable drawdown of late 2017/eary 2018. Stories of bad actors and illicit activities are still tied closely to the public sentiment and many talking heads in the financial space have cast the industry to the pile of niche technology that will never gain true mainstream traction, but events like this give me a great deal of hope.
It is not shocking that Jack picked up the torch. He went on record last year at CoinDesk’s Consensus conference talking about his hopes for bitcoin to become the “native currency” of the internet. The significance of this public showing of support was not lost on myself, however.
Jack is a well-respected tech leader who aside from being the original CEO of Twitter (he left in 2008 but returned in 2015), Dorsey is the co-founder and CEO of Square payments. It is safe to say that this man knows a few things about digital payments so his words about resiliency and principles are not to be taken lightly.
There will always have people who claim bitcoin’s price will plummet to zero just like people will always claim it will be the most valuable currency in the world. The ones I choose to listen to are those that understand people, their tendencies, and the financial industry holistically. People like Jack.
