Twitter and Bitcoin are intertwining and exciting things are happening.

Twitter & Bitcoin

For those of you who have followed Twitter and Square’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, you know that he is a big fan of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network and has been looking to integrate it into Twitter for quite some time. 

Twitter had initially introduced payment features in May of 2021 with the Tip Jar. The Tip Jar enabled users to send and receive payments through their Twitter accounts using third-party services such as Venmo, Patreon, Cash App (owned by Square), Bandcamp, PayPal, and more. 

As of September 23, 2021, Twitter now allows users to attach their Bitcoin, Lightning, and Strike addresses to their profiles for tipping purposes, as well as to enable non-custodial global Bitcoin transfers. Bitcoin’s Lightning wallets utilize Bitcoin’s layer-2 scaling solution - the Lightning Network, which increases speeds and reduces transaction fees. 

The fact that these transfers are non-custodial is enormous. If you send Bitcoin from one centralized exchange to another, there are points in time during the transaction that you are not holding the Bitcoin. The exchange is holding it. Non-custodianship implies YOU are the only one with custody of your funds at all times.

Users in the U.S and El Salvador can send Bitcoin payments to each other using the Lightning Network and the third-party Strike app. Due to state regulations, residents of New York and Hawaii are ineligible for this feature. 

Twitter has been on top of many web3 innovations and plans to transform its platform into something entirely unique in this new paradigm. 

Why Does This Matter?

The tipping feature will enable users and influencers to directly monetize their time on Twitter. If there are posts that users are particularly fond of, users can now monetarily reward the poster with Bitcoin. This increases the value of the Twitter network and increases the value propositions and use cases of Bitcoin.

Non-custodial, international Bitcoin transfers through Twitter accounts are going to disrupt the multi-hundred billion dollar remittance industry. Remittances are the payments that foreign workers send to their families back home. Until recently, migrants were forced to use expensive services like Western Union, where they would on average pay one month’s worth of wages in fees per year just to send money back to their family. Twitter is making it easier than ever to send remittances back home, and the fees are next to nothing.

I suspect many other platforms will be following suit. As we have seen with other products such as Snapchat stories, all the other social media platforms just copy each other. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were all offering stories, though now only Facebook does. Clubhouse introduces groups of people who are only communicating by voice - then Twitter introduces Twitter Spaces, which is the same thing. I suspect the users of these platforms will gradually spend more and more of their time on the ones integrated with crypto. Twitter is the first of its kind to do so. 

Twitter, Bitcoin, Strike, and the Lightning Network are intertwining their value systems to create a better future. 

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