Block, Inc., based by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and ex-CEO of Twitter, is a monetary know-how firm with a deepening full-stack connection to the Bitcoin business by means of its subsidiaries. Its corporations span funds apps and service provider tooling with Bitcoin integration, the event of bitcoin mining {hardware}, open supply software program growth, a decentralized finance protocol for peer-to-peer markets and even a self-custody {hardware} pockets.
Previously known as Sq. and founded in 2009, the corporate began integrating Bitcoin into its know-how providing as early as 2014 via Cash App — its most well-known subsidiary — permitting retailers to just accept bitcoin funds by means of the app. In 2021, Square Inc officially rebranded to Block Inc, doubling down on its dedication to Bitcoin and affirming its imaginative and prescient of the long run as one the place the Bitcoin Blockchain would play a pivotal function. Sq. grew to become a subsidiary of Block Inc and now offers primarily with fee terminal know-how. Right this moment, Block has 8,584 BTC on its balance sheet valued at virtually 1 billion {dollars}, with a median buy value of $30,405 {dollars} per bitcoin.
Of Block’s subsidiaries and investments, most have specific connections to Bitcoin or blockchain methods comparable to Money App, Bitkey, Proto, Spiral, TBD and Tidal. All of them are advancing Bitcoin adoption at varied ranges of the business and have rising affect and gratitude from the Bitcoin group. Jack Dorsey has been a number one donor to varied Bitcoin nonprofits and group efforts, together with OpenSats, which funds open supply Bitcoin growth and thru which an excessive amount of Nostr — a Bitcoin-native social community protocol — has been bootstrapped.
In an unique interview with Bitcoin Journal, Mile Suter, product lead at Block shared insights into their imaginative and prescient for the long run and Bitcoin’s ultimate function in it, saying that, “We predict Bitcoin achieves its final future when it’s getting used as on a regular basis cash. Identical to Satoshi supposed. I feel that Bitcoin as a world monetary infrastructure that everybody can entry lets corporations like Block function in a way more world method. And I feel that funds are important to sustaining the core properties that make Bitcoin distinctive and in the end will make it win in the long term.”
Under you’ll discover quick overviews of a few of Block’s Bitcoin-related corporations, notably these serving retail, with unique quotes from Suter on how they serve important roles within the path to hyperbitcoinization.
Sq.
Launched in 2009, Sq. is a point-of-sale (POS) system enabling retailers to just accept card funds and handle operations like stock, payroll, and enterprise loans. Serving 4 million sellers and processing $241 billion annually as of 2024, Sq. introduced that it started rolling out Bitcoin funds for retailers on the Bitcoin Vegas conference in 2025, permitting them to just accept bitcoin seamlessly by way of its POS {hardware}.
The transfer marks a serious milestone in Bitcoin’s integration with retail fee methods, establishing a lacking pillar up till now within the enterprise toolkit wanted to actually use bitcoin as a medium of alternate. “On the Sq. facet, we’ve got over 4 million retailers within the U.S. with a full suite of point-of-sale, stock, taxes, reporting, like the perfect within the enterprise by way of conventional funds processing. This initiative goes past simply Bitcoin funds,” stated Suter.
With the full-stack accounting integration of Bitcoin, retailers that needed to just accept the digital forex however couldn’t due to lack of tooling now have the door vast open. However the imaginative and prescient is bigger than that. “And we’re going to offer a full-stack Bitcoin banking suite particularly designed for small companies,” Suter added, leaning into the rising development of bitcoin treasury corporations and techniques that’s dominating Bitcoin information immediately.
Firms will quickly have all of the instruments to just accept bitcoin funds and put them instantly into their firm treasury moderately than immediately promote bitcoin for {dollars}. In the event that they want liquidity, they’re already in a position to put that bitcoin as collateral and get dollar-denominated loans straight to their checking account by way of corporations like Unchained — although, for sure, Block can be shifting in that route for his or her shoppers. Suter added that “one factor I like about this full-stack Bitcoin banking suite is that we’re democratizing entry to Bitcoin treasury instruments that have been beforehand solely obtainable to giant firms. I consider that holding Bitcoin in your steadiness sheet shouldn’t simply be a Wall Road luxurious.”
Money App
Money App, maybe essentially the most famend model throughout the Block portfolio, completes the retail funds facet of the hyperbitcoinization engine Block is constructing. Launched in 2013, Money App is a consumer-focused digital pockets with a reported 57 million active users in 2024, providing person-to-person funds, debit playing cards, shares and Bitcoin buying and selling, and tax submitting. Money App reported $10 billion in bitcoin-sourced income in 2024, making up 62% the total, by charging ~2% per commerce.
Money App may also be the primary mainstream funds app to combine Lightning, Bitcoin’s funds community. It’s on the slicing fringe of the business, producing the very best publicly disclosed, bitcoin-denominated income however working the Lightning Community at 9.7% return. This isn’t some bizarre crypto magic yield, and may solely be achieved by ensuring bitcoin funds are extremely environment friendly and dependable. Suited famous that “to me, it’s proof that Bitcoin is already a functioning fee community, not digital gold. It’s greater than that. And I don’t need to get too into the weeds right here, however I can confidently say that we’ve got essentially the most gifted set of Lightning engineers on this planet engaged on these issues.”
Exalted in regards to the success of Money App’s Bitcoin integration, Suter added that “we’re tremendous enthusiastic about Lightning’s function in making Bitcoin on a regular basis cash as a result of that’s actually, from a Block Inc. perspective, we consider that’s important for Bitcoin’s future, Satoshi’s unique imaginative and prescient, peer-to-peer digital money.”
Shoppers can’t simply simply purchase and ship bitcoin by way of Money App, but in addition automate purchases, an funding technique often called DCA or greenback value averaging, which has been mathematically demonstrated to be one of the best investment strategies there are in bitcoin.
The mix of Money App and Sq. unlocks what tech individuals name a “fly wheel,” a time period used to explain self-reinforcing loops of client and enterprise conduct that may drive a enterprise to new heights and which is often not potential if a constructing block in that enterprise logic is lacking. Maybe with these two main integrations, the imaginative and prescient of Bitcoin funds dreamt about by early adopters for over a decade, which have not likely labored very effectively up till now, can lastly develop into a actuality.
Bitkey
Anchored within the basic worth proposition of Bitcoin — censorship resistance by means of particular person liberty and self custody — Block has launched a brand new {hardware} pockets product known as Bitkey. The system is designed particularly for Bitcoin safety, utilizing a preferred know-how known as multisignature, which decentralize the passwords — non-public keys— wanted to maneuver the bitcoin to 3 totally different units: the Bitkey {hardware}, a key saved for restoration in Block’s servers and a 3rd key encrypted with the consumer’s credentials and saved on the consumer’s chosen Google drive account.
The Bitkey, launched globally in 2024, makes varied design selections that depart from the way in which different {hardware} wallets within the business perform — essentially the most main and controversial distinction being that it by no means reveals non-public key materials to the consumer. Not like each different {hardware} pockets and most self-custody Bitcoin and crypto apps, Bitkey hides key materials virtually solely from the consumer, as an alternative giving them varied well-designed instruments to safe, get well and inherit their bitcoin securely to their family members. Suter famous that “we constructed Bitkey to develop who can safely self-custody. We — Bitcoiners — joke that it’s best to onboard your grandma to self-custody, however I hear numerous tales of that being true and folks reaching out as a result of the onboarding was so seamless.”
The system seems and seems like alien know-how, each unit with a novel blended stone sample, and that lights as much as the contact, like it’s alive. It’s a profound rethinking of self custody, born of a deep critique of the consumer expertise of the standard Bitcoin seed backup method. Whereas the design has been available in the market for barely a yr and no public information on gross sales numbers has been launched, it is going to be attention-grabbing to see if they’ll break new floor into {hardware} pockets adoption — a metric traditionally poor for an business so culturally outlined by self custody.
