On Saturday night, February 1st, Twitter bequeathed a gift on the cryptocurrency community: entering a hashtag and “Bitcoin” in succession would yield what you see below, a yellow-colored emoji that is the BTC logo alongside the text “Bitcoin.”
Although this may seem extremely trivial—the addition of the Bitcoin emoji doesn’t add any functionality to Twitter—this little nod by the social media company has greatly enthused the crypto community.
This simple emoji has enthused us so much so that many have started singing the high praises of Jack Dorsey, the CEO of both Twitter and fintech company Square.
Community Goes Wild, With Everyone Tweeting About Bitcoin
When the emoji rolled out on Saturday, the crypto world went bonkers online. Literally nobody could stop tweeting about it — my tweet in the intro is a perfect case in point; if you were involved in Bitcoin, it was tacitly mandatory to make use of the fresh-faced feature.
Indeed, per data from LunarCrush, Bitcoin’s “combined social volume” has surged higher in the wake of the addition of the emoji for the hashtag, with there being 113,816 posts mentioning the asset just in the 24 hours leading to their post. This is the highest level of social volume there’s been in over a year, LunarCrush wrote.
Just how big of a deal is the new #bitcoin emoji? Bitcoin combined social volume just hit the highest level in the entire last year with 113,816 posts today (still climbing).
Thank you @jack for being such an incredible leader. https://t.co/bJshmQ1if3 $btc pic.twitter.com/hUgWPT3Whd
— LunarCrush (@LunarCrush) February 2, 2020
Twitter’s CEO Celebrated
Again, as trivial as an emoji may seem, many were quick to laud Dorsey. Ikigai Asset Management CIO Travis Kling wrote in the wake of this new feature that “you cannot overstate how much Jack has done for the Bitcoin ecosystem,” adding:
When the history books are written about all this, he will be viewed as one of the most impactful advocates for bringing a non-sovereign money to the world.
You cannot overstate how much @jack has done for the #bitcoin ecosystem.
When the history books are written about all this, he will be viewed as one of the most impactful advocates for bringing a non-sovereign money to the world. pic.twitter.com/JWsYB4H3WA
— Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) February 2, 2020
This was echoed by author of “Inventing Bitcoin” Yan Pritzker, who wrote that Dorsey’s decision to include the new hashtag in the biography of his Twitter account followed by millions is a massive show of support for the cryptocurrency:
The CEO and founder of Twitter (biggest communication platform in the world) and Square (#1 financial app in the app store) has the single word “Bitcoin” in his profile. Don’t sleep on this. You’ve been warned.
Dorsey responded to his friends in the Bitcoin community in kind, urging Unicode to add the Bitcoin emoji.
Dorsey Loves Bitcoin, There’s No Doubt About That
The decision to give the Bitcoin hashtag its own emoji is the latest move that Jack Dorsey has made to appease the community of the cryptocurrency.
In early-2019, Dorsey became one of Bitcoin’s loudest supporters, starting to laud the cryptocurrency in interviews and online.
Most notably, during a podcast with Joe Rogan, he said that he believes the cryptocurrency is currently the best contender to become the Internet’s native currency, citing the fact that Bitcoin is the most proven out of all digital currencies and that it has been birthed and developed all online.
Also, in an earnings call for his fintech company, he told Wall Street he “loves Bitcoin,” likely shocking a few of those that were on the call.
His love for Bitcoin has extended into his companies.
Square just secured a patent that outlines a system allowing fiat to be rapidly converted into “non-fiat” instruments, with the document mentioning the word “Bitcoin” and “cryptocurrency” (and Ethereum, too) on a number of occasions. The company’s crypto division also recently released a Lightning Development Kit (LDK) that should improve the functionality of the cryptocurrency.
There’s also been talk of Twitter adding a feature that will allow users to send money and value to other users. The details on this matter were scant, though some have suggested that it may involve Bitcoin and its Lightning Network, for Dorsey is notably a fan of the Lightning Network having held the “Lightning Torch” and putting Square to work developing the project.
