Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block Inc., has led a $6 million funding round for Azteco, a Santa Monica, California-based company with the mission of accelerating Bitcoin adoption by introducing Bitcoin gift cards.
Dorsey has a deep respect for Azteco’s mission to make life easier for the unbanked population worldwide and believes that the technology and resources required to make this positive change are available. Azteco’s core initiative is to elevate the value of Bitcoin to the level of traditional fiat currencies, like the US dollar, and to establish partnerships with companies across the globe, so Bitcoin spending would become mainstream.
Azteco CEO Akin Fernandez cites the potential of single point of failure and corruption that comes with relying on a third party as the currency issuer, and suggests replacing centralized control with a computer program to make Bitcoin a politically and financially neutral global synthetic currency, accessible to people worldwide. Azteco’s reach extends to nearly 600,000 payment locations in about 200 countries, with the potential to have significant impact, especially in the United States, where 4.5% of households were unbanked in 2021.
Dorsey’s support for Azteco and Bitcoin is not a new development. In June, he committed $5 million to back Bitcoin developers, planning to distribute it over five years and provide $1 million yearly to Bitcoin-linked initiatives. Further, he co-founded the Bitcoin non-profit organization Btrust with Jay-Z, which recently acquired Qala, a company focused on training African Bitcoin and Lightning engineers. The acquisition has led to the rebranding of Qala as the Btrust Builders Program, in an effort to advance Bitcoin development on the African continent.
