Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter and a strong supporter of Bitcoin, has reignited debate in the crypto community with his latest comments on what BTC truly is.
Dorsey took to X on Sunday to post a brief message stating “Bitcoin is not crypto,” prompting a massive response with more than 4,000 comments.
While some argued that the anonymous BTC creator Satoshi Nakamoto described Bitcoin (BTC) as a “peer-to-peer cryptocurrency” on the Bitcointalk forum back in 2010, Dorsey highlighted the word “currency,” underscoring its monetary roots.
An early Bitcoin adopter himself, Dorsey has long been rumored to have played a role in Bitcoin’s creation. Earlier this year, Seán Murray of deBanked published a list of circumstantial evidence suggesting as much, though it remains unverified.
Dorsey denied being Nakamoto in a 2020 interview with Lex Fridman, stating: “No, and if I were, would I tell you?”
“Crypto” not mentioned once in Bitcoin’s white paper
Looking at Bitcoin’s origins, Dorsey said the Bitcoin white paper — the foundational document introducing BTC in 2008 — makes no reference to “crypto,” backing his argument that BTC stands apart from the broader industry.
Instead, the white paper describes Bitcoin as a “purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” and an “electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust.”
In a Bitcointalk post in July 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto also referred to Bitcoin as a “digital currency using cryptography and a distributed network to replace the need for a trusted central server.”
So what is Bitcoin?
While distinguishing Bitcoin from “crypto,” Dorsey offered his answer in an earlier post just an hour before the “not crypto” tweet, writing simply: “Bitcoin is money.”
Dorsey defended Bitcoin’s status as “money” by highlighting progress with zero-fee BTC payments by his financial services company Block and its payments processing arm Square.
The Bitcoin advocate specifically cited a post user Jamie Selects, who claimed to have “sold every Square Seller on bitcoin payments” at a local market, thanks to excitement over Square’s “zero processing fees in 2026.”
Dorsey has long been an advocate of Bitcoin as a payment method, encouraging social media apps like Signal Messenger to adopt BTC payments in April.
Related: Jack Dorsey urges tax-free status for ‘everyday’ Bitcoin payments
Bitcoin’s “money” status comes in line with Dorsey’s vision that Bitcoin cannot succeed as a pure store of value, and has to maintain its payment use case to stay relevant.
Community criticism
Not everyone agrees with Dorsey’s view, with critics pointing to Bitcoin’s limited scalability, which can lead to slower processing times and higher fees.
Many have also pushed back against his “Bitcoin is not crypto” claim, highlighting the divide between Bitcoin maximalists and supporters of the broader crypto ecosystem, or altcoins.
David Schwartz, a prominent industry figure who is set to step back from his role as chief technology officer at Ripple by year-end, has joined the debate by highlighting confusion over Dorsey’s tweet.
“I don’t really know what Jack was trying to communicate here. I think he’s somehow trying to say that bitcoin should be seen as a payment system rather than a speculative asset. But I don’t know,” Schwartz wrote.
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