Bitcoin lover Jack Dorsey today pledged to donate $1 billion—roughly 28% of his wealth—to fight the coronavirus. Dorsey, who founded Square and Twitter, is putting the money into a limited liability company he started called Start Small. In his announcement—via tweet of course—Dorsey said that after the virus was defeated he would shift the funds to "girl's health and education" as well as Universal Basic Income, one of his passions.
I’m moving $1B of my Square equity (~28% of my wealth) to #startsmall LLC to fund global COVID-19 relief. After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and UBI. It will operate transparently, all flows tracked here: https://t.co/hVkUczDQmz
In a novel move, the money and how it will be spent, can be tracked by the public in a Google document.
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"Why UBI and girl’s health and education? I believe they represent the best long-term solutions to the existential problems facing the world," the 43-year-old entrepreneur tweeted.
Not your father's Silicon Valley
Dorsey's approach to philanthropy is different from other tech titans. For instance, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has repeatedly said that he intends to be philanthropic toward the end of his life, and solve problems that will take multiple generations to resolve. But the coronavirus crisis has not been his, or Amazon's moment to shine. Though Bill Gates, though his foundation is reportedly spending billions coming up with a corona vaccine, he's become the focus of wack-a-doodle conspiracy theories that he's some how profiting from the disaster.
Meanwhile, his embrace of Universal Basic Income—which would guarantee everyone a minimal subsistence income, was cheered by UBI fans.
Dorsey has long been a fan of innovative finance, and is particularly enamored with Bitcoin. Square, his mobile payments company, was an early adopter of it.
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