Jack Dorsey says ‘hell no’ to joining Libra

Twitter will never join Libra, CEO Jack Dorsey said today at a Twitter media event in New York City. He said “hell no” when asked if he would join and explained that the Facebook-created cryptocurrency initiative didn’t need to be a cryptocurrency to pull of its broader goals of democratizing the financial system. “I don’t know if it’s a gimmick,” Dorsey said, “but a cryptocurrency wasn’t necessary to make that work”

“It’s not an internet open standard that was born on the internet,” Dorsey said. “It was born out of a company’s intention, and it’s not consistent with what I personally believe and what I want our company to stand for.”

At the same time, Dorsey was broadly enthusiastic about more decentralized cryptocurrencies, seeing them as part of an emergent international online community. “I think the internet is somewhat of an emerging nation-state in almost every way,” he told the crowd. “It almost has a currency now in the form of…