Twitter Hires Engineering Lead for Crypto and Blockchain

Image: @_tessr on Twitter

Twitter has hired Tess Rinearson (@_tessr) as its Crypto Engineering Lead, a spokesperson for the social media platform said in an email to iPhone in Canada.

Rinearson, who is based in Berlin, Germany, will be “building & leading Twitter Crypto, a center of excellence for all things blockchain at Twitter under CTO Parag Agrawal.”

I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined Twitter, to lead a new team focused on crypto, blockchains, and other decentralized technologies—including and going beyond cryptocurrencies.✨ pic.twitter.com/HaP0k5hUOq

— Tess Rinearson (@_tessr) November 10, 2021

The hiring comes just over a month after Twitter announced it would be embracing the blockchain space, with NFT verification and the new Tips feature accepting payments in Bitcoin.

It looks like Rinearson will take the helm of a dedicated cryptocurrency and blockchain team at Twitter, which the company is still in the process of fleshing out.

“There’s massive and growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies – Tess will focus here, with a long term goal of exploring how ideas from crypto can help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with identity, community and more,” reads the email.

To start with, Rinearson will be exploring Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as payment options for a number of Twitter’s services, including Tips, Ticketed Spaces, and more.

The company also said it wants to evaluate “opportunities for creator monetization” that lie in blockchain technology, how the tech can be best integrated into Twitter, and, in collaboration with Bluesky, how social media as a whole can be decentralized.

Twitter isn’t the only tech company to turn its attention to blockchain and cryptocurrency. On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted he owned crypto, and said he had “been interested in it for a while.”