The glamorous life of tech billionaire Jack Dorsey, who is known for eccentricities like eating one meal a day and taking ice baths

At age 15, Dorsey wrote dispatch software that is still used by some taxi companies, according to a biography on Dorsey. For fun, he attended punk rock shows.

He briefly attended the Missouri University of Science and Technology and transferred to New York University before calling it quits in 1999, one semester before graduation, to focus on his idea for Twitter, according to the biography.

The experiment with basic code on a Blackberry predecessor – detailed in a 2013 New Yorker article – didn't impress his friends. Around 2002, he became a professional masseur, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

He got his license in about 2002 before exploding onto the tech scene, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Dorsey kept his Twitter handle simple, "@jack." He hasn't changed it since. In 2007, Dorsey became Twitter's first CEO.

By 2008, Williams had taken over as CEO, and Dorsey transitioned to chairman of Twitter's board.

Dorsey immediately got started on new projects. He invested in Foursquare and launched a payments startup called Square that let small-business owners accept credit-card payments through a smartphone attachment.

Dorsey had to remind Obama to keep his replies under 140 characters, Twitter's limit at the time.

In 2014, Forbes pegged Dorsey's net worth at $2.2 billion, and it spiked as high as $12.5 billion in 2021.

The $1.40 salary actually represented a pay rise for Dorsey, who in previous years had refused any payment at all.

He's far from the only Silicon Valley mogul to have taken a measly salary — Mark Zuckerberg makes $1 a year as CEO of Facebook.

"Now he's able to say, like, 'The BMW is the only car I drive, because it's the best automotive engineering on the planet,' or whatever," Twitter cofounder Biz Stone told The New Yorker in 2013.

The house has a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Dorsey said Musk's tweets were "focused on solving existential problems and sharing his thinking openly."

He added that he enjoyed all the "ups and downs" that came with Musk's sometimes unpredictable use of the site. Musk himself replied, tweeting his thanks and "Twitter rocks!" followed by a string of random emojis.

Both Musk and Dorsey are crypto enthusiasts and have been friendly in the past — even texting each other.

Dorsey told Rolling Stone about the meal, which took place in 2011. Dorsey said the goat was served cold and that he stuck to a salad.

In 2019, Dorsey appeared on a podcast run by a health guru who previously said that vaccines caused autism. Dorsey said during his interview that he ate one meal a day and fasted all weekend. He said the first time he tried fasting it made him feel like he was hallucinating.

"It was a weird state to be in. But as I did it the next two times, it just became so apparent to me how much of our days are centered around meals and how — the experience I had was when I was fasting for much longer, how time really slowed down," he said.

In a later interview with Wired, Dorsey said he ate seven meals a week, "just dinner."

In 2016, Banks posted on her now-deleted Twitter account that Dorsey sent her his hair, "in an envelope." Dorsey later told the Huffington Post that the incident never happened.

Dorsey and Sandberg were asked about election interference on Twitter and Facebook as well as alleged anti-conservative bias in social media companies at the event.

During the hearing, Dorsey shared a snapshot of his spiking heart rate on Twitter. He was in the hot seat for several hours, and he showed his heart rate peaked at 109 beats per minute.

Dorsey tweeted glowingly about a vacation he took to Myanmar for his birthday in December 2018. "If you're willing to travel a bit, go to Myanmar," he said.

This came at the height of the Rohingya crisis, and Dorsey was attacked for his blithe promotion of the country — especially since social-media platforms were accused of having been complicit in fueling hatred toward the Rohingya.

In a bizarre Huffington Post interview in 2019, Dorsey was asked whether Donald Trump — an avid tweeter — could be removed from the platform if he called on his followers to murder a journalist. Dorsey gave a vague answer that drew sharp criticism.

Following the interview's publication, Dorsey said he didn't care about "looking bad."

"I care about being open about how we're thinking and about what we see," he added.

Dorsey appeared via videoconference at the Senate hearing on Section 230, a part of US law that protects internet companies from legal liability for user-generated content, as well as giving them broad authority to decide how to moderate their own platforms.

In prepared testimony ahead of the hearing, Dorsey said stripping back Section 230 would "collapse how we communicate on the Internet" and suggested ways for tech companies to make their moderation processes more transparent.

And during the hearing, Dorsey once again faced accusations of anti-conservative bias.

The accusations from Republican lawmakers focused on the way Twitter enforces its policies, particularly the way it has labeled tweets from President Trump compared to other world leaders.

Dorsey took the brunt of questions from lawmakers, even though he appeared alongside Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

He appeared in another hearing a few weeks later with Zuckerberg, facing questions from Republicans who were displeased with how the platforms had dealt with President Donald Trump's social media accounts. 

Dorsey said in the "Tales of the Crypt" March 2019 podcast that he started using ice baths and saunas in the evenings around 2016.

He said he alternately sits in his barrel sauna for 15 minutes and then switches to an ice bath for three. He repeats this routine three times before finishing it off with a one-minute ice bath.

He also likes to take an icy dip in the mornings to wake him up.

Page Six reported in September 2018 that the pair were spotted together at the Harper's Bazaar Icons party during New York Fashion Week. Page Six also reported that Dorsey's exes included the model and actor Lily Cole and the ballet dancer Sofiane Sylve.

Dorsey's announcement followed a tour of Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa.

"Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!). Not sure where yet, but I'll be living here for 3-6 months mid 2020," he wrote on Twitter.

But, then Dorsey came under threat of being ousted as Twitter CEO by the activist investor Elliott Management. 

The firm wanted to oust Dorsey because he was splitting his time between two companies — by acting as CEO of both Twitter and his financial-tech firm Square (now called Block) — and because he was planning to move to Africa.

Twitter announced on March 9, 2020 that it had reached a deal with Elliott Management that would leave Dorsey in place as CEO.

The deal included a $1 billion investment from the private equity firm Silver Lake, and partners from both Elliott Management and Silver Lake joined Twitter's board.

Patrick Pichette, the lead independent director of Twitter's board, said he was "confident" they were "on the right path with Jack's leadership" but added that a new temporary committee would be formed to instruct the board's evaluation of Twitter's leadership.

Twitter said Parag Agrawal, the chief technology officer, would take over as CEO.

Dorsey posted on his Twitter account saying: "Not sure anyone has heard but, I resigned from Twitter."

In his tweet, he included a screenshot of the email he sent to Twitter staff announcing his resignation.

In May 2022, his time on the board of directors officially ended, an anticipated move that coincided with the company's stockholder's meeting.

"The name change creates room for further growth," the company said in a statement.

"Block references the neighborhood blocks where we find our sellers, a blockchain, block parties full of music, obstacles to overcome, a section of code, building blocks, and of course, tungsten cubes," it added.

The line about tungsten cubes was an apparent reference to a craze among crypto enthusiasts of paying as much as $3,500 for novelty tungsten cubes.

The title change was made official in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 20, 2022.

"There will be no changes in Mr. Dorsey's roles and responsibilities," the filing said.

Block's website was also updated to list his new title as Block Head.

In particular, Dorsey is a fan of bitcoin, a cryptocurrency he described in early 2019 as "resilient" and "principled." He told the "Tales of the Crypt" podcast in March that year that he was maxing out the $10,000 weekly spending limit on Square's Cash App buying up bitcoin.

In October 2020 he slammed Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong for forbidding employee activism at the company, saying cryptocurrency is itself a form of activism.

He's also said he hopes bitcoin can help bring about "world peace" in a panel alongside Musk and Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood called "The B Word" on July 2021. He said he loves the bitcoin community because it's "weird as hell."

"It's the only reason that I have a career — because I learned so much from people like who are building bitcoin today," Dorsey said.

In August 2022, Twitter's former head of security, Peiter Zatko, filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC, alleging the company participated in negligent security practices under Dorsey.

In his 84-page report and subsequent testimony, Zatko made a number of allegations against the company, including claims it had "egregious deficiencies" around security protocol and that Dorsey experienced a "drastic loss of focus" in his last year as CEO of Twitter. 

A month later, Dorsey was deposed and questioned under oath for another issue: Musk's legal battle with Twitter over his proposed $44 billion takeover.

Musk's team accused Twitter of misleading investors and intentionally "miscounting" spam accounts, BI reported. 

In the texts, Dorsey explained why he left the company and said he previously pushed to get Musk involved with Twitter. 

"A new platform is needed. It can't be a company. That's why I left," Dorsey wrote to Musk, adding he thought Twitter should be an "open-sourced protocol" and couldn't "have an advertising model." 

Dorsey also told Musk he had advocated for the Tesla CEO's addition to the Twitter board a year earlier. But his request was denied, which he said he thought "was completely stupid and backwards."

The blockchain-based company's beta launch raked in 30,000 signups in two days. According to Bluesky's website, the company is intended to support "a new foundation for social networking which gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build, and users a choice in their experience."

As of November 2023, the company said it had over two million users.

After Musk ordered mass layoffs at Twitter after taking over in November 2022, Dorsey tweeted an apology: "I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that."

"Folks at Twitter past and present are strong and resilient," he wrote on Twitter. "They will always find a way no matter how difficult the moment. I realize many are angry with me."

He continued: "I am grateful for, and love, everyone who has ever worked on Twitter. I don't expect that to be mutual in this moment...or ever…and I understand."

In 2022, Dorsey criticized Musk's decision to rebrand the social media site's Birdwatch feature to call it Community Notes, dubbing it the "most boring Facebook name ever."

In April 2023 the Twitter cofounder openly criticized Musk's leadership in a series of social media posts Friday, writing that "it all went south" and Musk "should have walked away" from the acquisition. 

But in July 2023, Dorsey said "running Twitter is hard" after Musk sparked a backlash by announcing "rate limits" on viewing tweets.

"I don't wish that stress upon anyone," Dorsey tweeted. "I trust that the team is doing their best under the constraints they have, which are immense. It's easy to critique the decisions from afar … which I'm guilty of … but I know the goal is to see Twitter thrive. It will."

Dorsey also urged "calm" when Musk rebranded Twitter to X last year.

The Twitter cofounder sat with Jay-Z and Beyonce at the Super Bowl on Sunday.

At the event, Dorsey wore a "Satoshi" T-shirt — a nod to the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, known only by the name Satoshi Nakamoto.

Dorsey was far from the only celebrity at the event. Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook were also separately pictured at the game.