What Square gets right about bitcoin, Facebook and Libra get wrong — Quartz

Since he created Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg’s playbook hasn’t changed: He copies things and claims they belong to him.

This week, as he endured a bitter hearing before the US House Financial Services Committee, it felt as though Zuckerberg’s cryptocurrency project Libra was on trial. As they did in July, lawmakers railed against Libra, worrying it could facilitate money laundering and terrorist financing. They questioned Facebook’s CEO about his company’s unchecked expansion and expressed fears that Libra could threaten the US dollar.

But while Zuckerberg endured another public humiliation, he demonstrated exactly what not to do for companies contemplating a crypto strategy. Creating private money (like Libra) is not the answer. The CEO of another social network realizes that.

Although he’s also pursuing a crypto future, Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Twitter and Square, hasn’t absorbed a beating. He’s actually been celebrated by the open-source software community. That’s…