Twitter CFO Says Crypto Is Too Volatile to Invest in Right Now

On Monday, Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal said that investing in crypto “doesn’t make sense right now” due to extreme market volatility and the industry’s lack of accounting rules, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal,

Segal noted that in order for Twitter to invest in crypto, the social media giant would have to change its current investment policies, which currently only permit the company to hold stable assets like securities on its balance sheet. 

Dorsey’s fingers are in the Bitcoin pie. 

While Twitter’s CFO appears to be reticent to invest in crypto, Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey has enthusiastically embraced the world of digital assets. 

Back in March, Dorsey minted his first tweet–the first-ever tweet on Twitter– as a non-fungible token (NFT) and sold it through the marketplace Valuables for a princely sum of $2.9 million to Bridge Oracle CEO Sina Estavi.

Beyond experimenting with NFTs, Dorsey is also a self-professed Bitcoin maximalist.

In October last year, another of Dorsey’s company’s, the payments firm Square, added $50 million in Bitcoin to its balance sheet.

At this year’s Bitcoin conference in Miami, he also told an interviewer that “Bitcoin absolutely changes everything,” but he was less enthused about altcoins like Ethereum and Dogecoin. 

Twitter’s crypto team

Despite its CFO’s concerns, Twitter is keen to embrace blockchain’s decentralized technology. 

Last week, the company announced it was setting up a blockchain team to explore “ways to incorporate decentralized technologies into our products and infrastructure.”

The team leader is a Berlin-based crypto engineer called Tess Rinearson. 

Rinearson announced her new role on the platform the day the news broke, saying: “I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Twitter, to lead a new team focused on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies — including and going beyond cryptocurrencies.”

So, while Segal thinks it’s prudent to hold back on large-scale crypto investments right now, Twitter is certainly looking to capitalize on the nascent promise of blockchain. 

Details of just how it will achieve this are scarce, but Twitter may very well be on the blockchain in the near future.