Twitter adds ether to Tips feature, joining bitcoin

Bitcoin will just have to learn to share.

Twitter announced Wednesday that users can now add their Ethereum wallet addresses to their profiles as part of the social media giant’s iOS and Android Tips payment feature. Tips lets Twitter users add public-facing payment methods to their accounts, so that users can (as the name suggests) send tips or payments to others on the platform.

Up until today, Twitter had included traditional payment apps like Cash App in Tips, as well as the less traditional Bitcoin wallet addresses.

Notably, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is considered by many in the cryptocurrency space to be a Bitcoin Maximalist. That is, he has historically been all in on Bitcoin, while dismissing other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.

Pay up.
Credit: Screenshot: Twitter

“All of the other coins, for me, don’t factor in at all,” Decrypt reports Dorsey explaining at 2021’s Miami Bitcoin conference.

Dorsey, of course, resigned as Twitter CEO in November of last year.

Tweet may have been deleted

When asked, a Twitter spokesperson denied Dorsey’s recent departure has anything to do with Twitter finally adding Ethereum to its Tips feature. A coincidence, surely.

Indeed, despite Dorsey’s professed passion for Bitcoin, Twitter has been slowly and steadily welcoming Ethereum with open arms. In January of this year (less than two months after Dorsey’s departure), Twitter announced users could link NFTs — as long as they lived on the Ethereum blockchain — to their user profile pics. And in June of 2021, Twitter gave away NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain.

So it’s not like Wednesday’s Tips announcement is totally out of the blue. Still, the timing sure is funny.