Twitter CEO Dorsey Praises Bitcoin While Defending Trump Ban

In a tweet storm today, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey addressed last week's ban of Donald Trump from the platform—and paused to hail Bitcoin's ability to enable decentralized control.

Trump was booted from the social network in the aftermath of last week's US Capitol attacks after Twitter deemed his tweets likely to incite further violence.

"I believe this was the right decision for Twitter," he wrote in today's post. "We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety. Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all."

The CEO expressed mixed feelings about the ban, which some have criticized as setting a dangerous precedent, but then pivoted to stated that Twitter will work toward "more transparency in our moderation operations."

However, he said, "All this can't erode a free and open global internet."

So, what's a popular and powerful social media app to do? Embrace Bitcoin.

"The reason I have so much passion for Bitcoin is largely because of the model it demonstrates: a foundational internet technology that is not controlled or influenced by any single individual or entity," he wrote.

If all that sounds at odds with the influence Twitter exerts over political conversations, Dorsey suggested he's working to reconcile the differences via the firm's Blue Sky initiative, which seeks to create "an open decentralized standard for social media."

Whether or not that's possible, or still desirable, remains to be tweeted.