STX Token Shoots Up 65% Following Jack Dorsey’s Exit: Coincidence?

The Stacks Network (STX) token has spiked nearly 65 percent in the past week, half of which came after the announcement that CEO Jack Dorsey was resigning from his position at Twitter. Some in the investor community cite Dorsey’s decision to step down as the instigator for the price movement.

In the past four days, the STX price has risen nearly 65 percent to its new all-time high of US$3.61 and at the time of writing had cooled down to US$2.60, according to data from CoinMarketCap. On the day of the Twitter announcement, the price shot up 25 percent, pointing to some sort of correlation for some in the investing community.

Dorsey’s Connection to Bitcoin

While the reason for the spike is not cut and dried, multiple things have happened that could impact the increasing price of the token. The speculation around what Dorsey will do next is one of the driving factors – now that the ex-Twitter CEO has stepped down, will he pursue his passion for Bitcoin and decentralisation?

“If I were not at Square or Twitter, I’d be working on Bitcoin,” Dorsey said at Bitcoin 2021, a conference held in Miami in June. The tech entrepreneur has shown his interest in blockchain technology multiple times. Even at Twitter, Dorsey spearheaded Bluesky – a project aimed at turning the social media company into a decentralised protocol.

Upgrades Coming to STX

Among the other reasons for the price spike, Stacks Network recently announced a major upgrade (SIP-012), due December 12. The improvement proposal aims to increase the network capacity by 100 percent as well as launch its CrashPunks non-fungible token (NFT) collection. The Stacks NFT marketplace has also contributed to the protocol’s rallying price action in the past.

Bitcoin, being the first of its kind, was not built with smart contract capabilities, therefore to utilise new functionality such as DeFi and smart contracts, a protocol will need to plug into Bitcoin.

Co-founded in Princeton University’s computer science department in 2013, Stacks Network is a layer 1 network facilitating smart contracts that settle on the Bitcoin blockchain. The STX token acts as fuel to power those smart contracts on the network, and by staking STX and supporting consensus, participants are paid in BTC.