Twitter Readies Bitcoin Payments, Explores NFTs

Jack Dorsey has already integrated bitcoin into his payments company, Square. Users can buy and sell bitcoin with the Cash App. In addition, Square holds thousands of bitcoins on its balance sheet worth more than $350 million based on the most recent BTC price. Now Dorsey is expanding bitcoin-related features to his social media platform, Twitter.

Twitter has decided to roll out its Tips feature to global users including bitcoin payments. The new tool gives users the ability to link to payment platforms, including the Cash App, Venmo and others, so followers can not only show their support by liking a tweet but also by sending money. Twitter says it plans to integrate the Tips feature on iOS to start followed by Android devices. Below is a list of the payment platforms Twitter supports.

The company also revealed that it won’t be taking a cut from Tip payments.  The stock rallied anyway, rising nearly 4% on the day to just below $67.

Crypto Payments

Twitter is also integrating bitcoin payments via Strike, which in turn uses the Lightning Network, a blockchain-fueled network that enables real-time transactions. To participate, users in eligible geographies must create a Strike account to be able to receive bitcoin payments. To send bitcoin payments, users can any bitcoin Lightning wallet.

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, called Twitter bitcoin payments “huge,” saying it will only be a matter of time before other social media platforms follow in its footsteps. He pointed to Reddit, which is going in a similar direction.

Twitter and NFTs

Twitter doesn’t plan to stop there and is also exploring adding support for non-fungible tokens, which are largely an Ethereum phenomenon. The crypto community is already known for adding NFTs as their profile picture on their Twitter accounts, so this would not be a stretch.

Twitter also wants to add an NFT authentication feature for creators of these popular digital assets. Doing so would let Twitter users verify their NFT avatars.

Dorsey is a Bitcoin bull while most NFTs are built on Ethereum. He has already tipped his hand to a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform built on the Bitcoin blockchain. DeFi is similarly largely an Ethereum trend.