Jay Z and Jack Dorsey keen to establish Bitcoin development fund

Bitcoin has definitely left its mark on the A-listers and this time, prompting rapper Jay Z and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to establish a Bitcoin development fund.

Dorsey tweeted on Friday that they are taking applications for a “blind irrevocable trust” focused on Africa and India. He promises, according to CNN, the fund will have zero direction from himself and Jay Z, and that the partners are searching for three board members. The duo are investing 500 Bitcoin into the project, currently worth about $23 million.

This may come as another bumper for India, where the government is working on a bill to ban private cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, in the country. Last week, Elon Musk had tweeted cryptic endorsements of it, and Tesla has purchased $1.5 billion worth of it. The EV company also said it would start accepting Bitcoin as a payment method for its products. Tesla’s move into cryptocurrency represents an investment of a significant percentage of its cash in the investment. The company had more than $19 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand at the end of 2020.

The Twitter CEO’s interest in cryptocurrency is nothing new. Square, Dorsey’s other company, bought 4,709 Bitcoins in October 2020, equal to $50 million at that time. In 2018, the company expanded its mobile payment service Cash App to support Bitcoin trading, even for users without a bank account. Then in 2019, it launched Square Crypto, which awards grants to Bitcoin developers and designers.

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Cryptocurreny gained more interest and investors in the pandemic when people started looking for alternative assets. Fawad Razaqzada, analyst at ThinkMarkets, pointed out that as more and more companies start accepting Bitcoin, this will only lead to further increases in demand in a market which is limited in supply.

Brad Bechtel, global head of FX at Jefferies, said Bitcoin is becoming an alternative asset. “Its not correlated to anything else in the market. And that makes it an attractive asset to add to a portfolio.”