Jack Dorsey, Lil Wayne, and Jay-Z Commits 500 BTC ($23.7M) To Bitcoin Development

Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey has teamed up with American rappers, Michael Carter (a.k.a Lil Wayne), and Shawn Carter (a.k.a Jay-Z) to fund Bitcoin development.

According to Dorsey’s Friday announcement, the trio has committed 500 BTC (appr. $23.7 million) to a newly launched endowment named ₿trust. The entire donation will go into funding bitcoin development, initially focusing on teams based in Africa and India.

The Twitter boss is seeking at least three board members, mentioning that the ₿trust will be a “blind irrevocable trust,” and not take direction from the donors. The trust’s mission is

JAY-Z/@S_C_ and I are giving 500 BTC to a new endowment named ₿trust to fund #Bitcoin development, initially focused on teams in Africa & India. It‘ll be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, taking zero direction from us. We need 3 board members to start: https://t.co/L4mRBryMJe

— jack (@jack) February 12, 2021

The Trust’s mission statement is to “make bitcoin the internet’s currency,” a target that Dorsey has reiterated his commitment to in the past. The Twitter and Square CEO actively funds bitcoin development and has also led his companies to adopt bitcoin.

Square has already purchased $50 million worth of BTC as part of its treasury strategy, while Twitter is reportedly considering following the steps and also paying employees with bitcoin.

In an interview earlier this week, Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Ned Segal admitted,

We’ve done a lot of the upfront thinking to consider how we might pay employees should they ask to be paid in Bitcoin, how we might pay a vendor if they asked to be paid in BTC and whether we need to have BTC on our balance sheet.

Based on the CFO’s comment, industry experts believe it is almost inevitable that Twitter joins MicroStrategy, Square, and Tesla in adopting bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset.