SAN FRANCISCO | Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, announced on Friday the creation with rapper Jay Z of a foundation to finance the development of bitcoin as an “internet currency”.
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“Jay-Z and I are going to donate 500 bitcoins to a new endowment called Btrust to fund the development of bitcoin, which will initially be focused on teams in Africa and India,” tweeted Jack Dorsey, also boss of Square, a payment services.
500 bitcoins were worth some $ 24 million on Friday.
“It will be a blind trust, which will not receive any instructions from us,” he said, before referring to a link for candidates for the first three board positions.
According to the application page, Btrust’s mission will be to “make bitcoin the currency of the internet”.
Canadian authorities on Friday authorized the launch of the world’s first exchange-traded bitcoin fund, giving investors greater access to this cryptocurrency.
Despite its sulphurous reputation – bitcoin is suspected of being used for illegal transactions – cryptocurrency is gaining its fame thanks to investments from large companies.
On Monday, Tesla invested $ 1.5 billion in bitcoin and plans to accept virtual currency as a form of payment for its cars.
In October, online payments giant PayPal launched a cryptocurrency buying, selling and payment service, while Square announced that it had invested $ 50m in bitcoin.
BlackRock, which manages trillions of dollars on behalf of funds administering the pensions of civil servants and companies or rich fortunes, also brought its legitimacy by adding, at the end of January, the virtual currency to the list of financial products in which he could invest.
Jack Dorsey has never made a secret of his interest in bitcoin, which he sees as a model of decentralized governance for the internet.