• Twitter has established a new team (Twitter Crypto) whose focus will be blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and dApps.
• Led by software engineer Tess Rinearson, the team will work with BlueSky to achieve their goals and further Twitter’s crypto and blockchain interest.

Delving deeper into cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, Twitter is now launching a dedicated crypto team to support the adoption of digital assets and decentralized apps (dApps). Newly hired software engineer Tess Rinearson will be at the helm of the team dubbed “Twitter Crypto.”

Before joining Twitter, Rinearson served at Tendermint blockchain protocol, specifically on the consensus engine Tendermint Core. She also worked at the cross-border payments firm Interstellar.

Rinearson announced the news via a Twitter thread:

I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Twitter, to lead a new team focused on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies—including and going beyond cryptocurrencies.

She added:

As I build out the team, we’ll be working to figure out what crypto can do for Twitter, as well as what Twitter can do for crypto. Twitter truly “gets” crypto (hello bitcoin tipping & NFTs!) but there’s so much more to explore here.

Twitter and crypto industry

Twitter Crypto’s very first task will focus on dApps, their creators, and audiences. The team, Rinearson notes, will support such software in managing virtual goods and currencies. Thereafter, Twitter Crypto will explore “how ideas from crypto communities can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community, ownership, and more.”

Additionally, Rinearson’s group will work closely with ‘Bluesky’, a decentralized social networking effort from Twitter. Formed in 2019, the Bluesky team consists of independent architects, engineers and designers tasked with developing an open and decentralized standard for social media. Twitter plans to operate on a decentralized social media protocol from Bluesky.

Rinearson concluded with a call for applicants in engineering and product to join her group which she touts as the “center of excellence” for all things blockchain at Twitter.

For quite a while now, social media giant Twitter has been making highlights in matters of cryptocurrency and blockchain. The company’s CEO Jack Dorsey is among other high-ranking figures such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook, who have expressed strong backing for cryptocurrencies.

In August, Dorsey tweeted,

#Bitcoin will unite a deeply divided country.

(and eventually: world).

In the same month, he rolled out a new open developer platform for decentralized financial (DeFi) services on the financial super-app Square. He even appeared with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Ark Invest CEO Cathy Wood in a discussion on “Bitcoin as a Tool for Economic Empowerment.” Dorsey also hinted at a possible integration of Twitter and the layer-2 protocol Lightning Network.

Twitter itself boasts of having a crypto tipping feature and an NFT profile verifier for those using NFTs as their Twitter avatars. The platform also become the first to approve a Bitcoin emoji in 2020.