Jack Dorsey declines Facebook Libra to back new crypto startup

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Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey has reportedly invested in a new cryptocurrency startup, despite recently turning down the opportunity to get involved in Facebook’s Libra project.

Dorsey said recently that he would never get involved with Libra. However, the Twitter CEO is among investors to have participated in the $10 million funding round for CoinList, a firm which works with companies to advise on token issues, the Wall Street Journal reported.

CoinList is set to use the investment from Dorsey and others to develop CoinList Trade, a cryptocurrency exchange and wallet platform currently under development.

The investment from Dorsey is his first time backing the company, which boasts a number of other investors from its last funding round in 2018, including Polychain Capital and Digital Currency Group. In recent months, Dorsey was quoted to have said he would consider paying developers to work on improving the bitcoin core ecosystem, as well as working on a wider range of cryptocurrency projects.

While the news will be welcomed by CoinList, in terms of providing much needed capital, it will also firmly underline Dorsey’s decision to give Libra a miss.

The development is only the latest blow for the embattled cryptocurrency, which continues to lunge from one crisis to another.

It follows just a matter of weeks after a number of high profile withdrawals from the project, which had included payment giants like Visa and MasterCard, as well as PayPal.

At the same time, the project is being met with increasing opposition from lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere, with suggestion from a leaked Zuckerberg meeting suggesting Facebook will not be launching the project until the regulatory compliance issues have been resolved.