Bitcoin price surges as Twitter announces BTC tipping option
BTC broke the all-important USD$45,000 barrier earlier today after Twitter announced its support for the digital asset.
- Twitter's new "Tip Jar" will allow individuals to support their favourite social media influencers monetarily, both in the form of crypto as well as local fiat assets.
- All BTC-related transactions taking place on the platform will be handled by crypto payments firm Strike.
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been a long-time proponent of BTC, even having invested in the development of the Lightning Network back in 2018.
After it seemed as though bears had taken control of the market, Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency by total capitalisation, has made a remarkable comeback, rising from AUD$57,500 to over AUD$61,500 over the course of the last 48 hours. At press time, BTC is trading for AUD$60,780.
It is worth noting that this ongoing rally comes on the heels of social media behemoth Twitter announcing its support for Bitcoin as a payment option as part of its "tipping jar" feature. Not only that, the platform's Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour also announced that the firm is working on a number of new safety measures including the option of allowing users to remove themselves from conversations seamlessly.
The Tip Jar will be rolled out globally via an iOS and Android app, with users being able to tip content creators or basically anyone with a sizeable following to receive funds in Bitcoin as well as other local fiat options. On a more technical note, it should be highlighted that all of BTC's Twitter transactions will be handled by Strike, a crypto-centric payment suite that has been made to run atop the Lightning Network, a technology that enables users to send and receive BTC in a near-instant manner at fee rates that are practically nothing when compared with traditional avenues such as SWIFT, PayPal and MoneyGram.
It was only a matter of time
Earlier this year, in July, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had hinted at the fact that he was looking to incorporate BTC as a payment option into Twitter's existing user interface, so this latest news does not come as that big of a surprise. However, what seems to have really grabbed everybody's attention is Twitter's decision to add NFT verification into its existing framework, which many experts believe is as significant a move as the company's new tipping feature.
In closing, it should be highlighted that over the last 6 odd months, NFT avatars on Twitter have seen a massive rise in popularity, with major mainstream celebrities including Jay-Z employing multimillion-dollar CryptoPunks as their profile pictures. In this regard, a mechanism that allows for the verification of these NFTs could help boost this fast-expanding ecosystem even more. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how the coming few days play out for the industry at large.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
