Jack Dorsey on UBI – Bitcoin Fosters Transparency and Long-Term Thinking
Twitter co-founder and Block (previously Square) CEO Jack Dorsey recently discussed the repercussions of a Bitcoin-powered universal basic income (UBI) strategy with full-time elementary school teacher and U.S. congressional candidate Aarika Rhodes.
It will be remembered that Dorsey’s Start Small program invested over $55 million across the United States and overseas to experiment on universal basic income.
“Obscurity of information forces and incentivizes people to negative (financial) behaviors that don’t work for them, their community, or family,” said Dorsey, even as he pointed out the lack of transparency within the existing centralized financial system.
“If there’s one thing to focus on in Bitcoin – the operations are transparent, the code is transparent, the policy is transparent.”
Dorsey believes this cornerstone of Bitcoin can solve numerous use cases and problems resulting from using fiat currency. Such has prompted the entrepreneur to invest in UBI through business initiatives like Start Small.
“We’re about to do a test of the UBI-like concept with Bitcoin as well,” Dorsey said.
His Bitcoin-powered UBI experiment involves creating a small-scale closed-loop community of merchants adhering to the Bitcoin standards. Dorsey aims to identify use causes for wide-scale implementation using the happiness quotient and willingness to participate in the experiment.
Rhodes is convinced that costs related to banking fees will significantly decrease with the involvement of Bitcoin. She said, “When you have something like Lightning (network), where you can transact at very low fees is a benefit for everyone. It doesn’t matter where you are economically.”
As for financial literacy, Dorsey claimed that implementing the Bitcoin standard infuses long-term thinking. However, his uncertainty toward a Bitcoin-powered UBI will ease depending on ongoing experiments’ results.
“Just that action of owning it (Bitcoin) will change people’s mindsets in fundamental ways that are net positive and compounds throughout their communities, and encourages other actions like sellers and merchants around them doing similar things,” he said.
Along with the benefits of the Bitcoin standard, Dorsey is likewise cautious of its negative impacts. In parting, he emphasized the inadequacies within the government policies and how UBI helps deal with some of the challenges. He said, “If you intend to help people by giving them money directly is far better than the money that the governments (federal and local) spends on these existing support structures. It’s not helping people.”
In a recent interview with Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, Dorsey commented that Facebook (rebranded as Meta) would have been better off using an open-ended protocol like Bitcoin instead of creating its own currency, Diem.
He added that making Bitcoin more available would benefit many of Meta’s instant messaging and voice-over-IP services like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and Whatsapp.