Jack Dorsey’s TBD For Decentralized Exchanges For Bitcoin

Square CEO Jack Dorsey just announced that TBD, Square’s new initiative, will be helping to create a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin.

First time Dorsey talked about TBD was when he tweeted: “Square is creating a new business (joining Seller, Cash App, & Tidal) focused on building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permissionless, and decentralized financial services. Our primary focus is #Bitcoin. Its name is TBD.”

Mike Brock, the TBD lead at Square, was reported to have said they believe Bitcoin will be the native currency of the internet, and while there are many projects to help make the internet more decentralized, their focus is solely on a sound global monetary system for all. However, including all requires a few pieces we think are missing.

He added that to get Bitcoin, individuals have to exchange their fiat currency at a centralized service such as Coinbase or CashApp. However, these face significant issues. He stated that this is the problem they will focus the most on solving. Make it easy to fund a non-custodial wallet anywhere in the world through a platform to build on-and off-ramps into Bitcoin. This can serve as a decentralized exchange for fiat.

About TBD, the speculation around it and the direction that the company would be taking, Brock shared some details. Including that TBD will be developed as an open-source protocol, and all crypto wallets will be able to use the platform. He added that as the company is taking this direction, there were still several gaps regarding scalability and cost and the ability to create the exchange infrastructure needed between cryptocurrencies.

Jack Dorsey, who is also the CEO of Twitter, is a vocal supporter and has stated that Bitcoin has become a huge part of Twitter and its future; having labeled the world’s largest cryptocurrency as one of the major trends relevant to it. He also confirmed that Square is going ahead with its plans of building a hardware wallet for Bitcoin. He has been dropping subtle hints about the platform since. The hardware wallet, like TBD, would be developed in the public domain and would act as an inclusive product that brings a non-custodial solution to the global market.