By Gabriel Negrín
When we think of bitcoin's biggest supporters, the Winklevoss twins or Michael Saylor come to mind. Yet, another name comes to the fore: Jack Dorsey, CEO of Square and Twitter.
And the truth is that Jack has always shown his support for bitcoin. So, we are not surprised that through Square he plans to help the bitcoin ecosystem.
According to a series of tweets made by Square's CEO, the company is planning to build a bitcoin mining system. The company intends to create a custom, open-source silicon-based system for individuals and businesses.
The tweet with the news was followed by a short statement. According to Dorsey, if this is possible, they would continue with the development of the hardware wallet model.
Likewise, he also committed to building in open collaboration with the community.
It's no secret to anyone that Twitter and Square's CEO is in favor of bitcoin. More than once he has reiterated that cryptocurrency is the answer to the future of the economy.
This project would add to the list of bitcoin-related projects that Square already has. This includes a business to build an open developer platform for decentralized finance.
This proposal would facilitate the creation of non-custodial, permissionless, decentralized financial services. Also, Square is still pursuing its plans to create a hardware wallet for the cryptocurrency.
Mining Made Easy
The whole project aims to pull more people into mining bitcoin. Mining has become one of the hardest things in the past years due to the rising demand for BTC.
Year after year, bitcoin mining becomes more difficult. The difficulty of the blocks increases and more and more powerful computers are needed to do this job. Dorsey says that with this new project, people would be able to mine bitcoin efficiently.
He also stated that with this project, two of the main concerns when it comes to Bitcoin would be handled. One of them is the amount of carbon footprint that bitcoin mining generates.
Everyone knows that mining bitcoin requires a lot of electricity. All this electricity in turn translates into large carbon footprints.
Dorsey has expressed concern about this issue. Therefore, he believes that with this project, bitcoin can be mined with cleaner energy.
The next concern is the future of bitcoin as a whole.
Also due to its demand, approximately 18.8 million bitcoins have already been mined, out of a total of 21 million. Some people are already anxious about the future of bitcoin and what will happen when the last bitcoin is mined.
Dorsey proposes a solution to this dilemma with this project. He believes that bitcoin needs to have even more decentralized mining. All of this would have one end: to have a more durable bitcoin network - even after the last bitcoin is mined.
He also argued that mining should be simplified so that more people can participate in it.
Dorsey also claimed that there is not enough incentive today for individuals. Running a miner on one's own is not worth the time or complexity for most.
He also asked what the biggest barriers are for people running miners — with energy consumption being one of the first problems to solve.
However, there was one statement from Jack that raised more than one eyebrow. According to Dorsey, silicon innovation will help solve the energy debate surrounding bitcoin mining.
But, there is a problem. Silicon technology is only managed by a handful of companies at the moment. This directly leads to supply constraints.
Following this briefing, Jack announced that Square's hardware development team, led by Jesse Dorogusker, will begin a deeper investigation.
They would first start researching the architecture, design, and prototyping of more efficient silicon. Then, they would focus on the right hashing algorithms and power architectures for this project.
While Square is still testing how achievable the project is, it is clearly a brilliant proposal. This news adds to the wave of good news about bitcoin since the ETF approval. Gone is China's FUD.
If this project has the right path, it could be another price catalyst for another new bull run. Time will tell - for now, just HODL.
