Square Puts 1% of Total Assets in Bitcoin in Surprise $50M Investment
Square, the payments company helmed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, announced Thursday it has purchased 4,709 bitcoins, a $50 million investment representing 1% of the firm’s total assets.
- “Square believes that cryptocurrency is an instrument of economic empowerment and provides a way for the world to participate in a global monetary system, which aligns with the company’s purpose,” the company said in a statement.
- “We believe that bitcoin has the potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future,” said Square CFO Amrita Ahuja. “For a company that is building products based on a more inclusive future, this investment is a step on that journey.”
- Characterized by Square as a mission-driven investment, Dorsey’s $50 million buy comes amid his very public spat over corporate responsibility with another crypto-friendly CEO: Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong.
- Dorsey chided Armstrong last week for discouraging his employees from engaging in activism in the workplace. Armstrong said it was a corporate imperative; Dorsey framed it as a hypocritical botch.
- “Bitcoin (aka “crypto”) is direct activism against an unverifiable and exclusionary financial system which negatively affects so much of our society,” Dorsey tweeted in response to Armstrong’s blog post.
- Square is also now the second technology firm to go long on bitcoin in recent months, after MicroStrategy, a business intelligence firm, crowned the crypto its treasury reserve asset of choice.
- MicroStrategy invested $425 million bitcoin over a series of disclosures that pumped the stock’s value and revealed its CEO, Michael Saylor, to be an unexpectedly vocal bitcoin maximalist.
- But Square’s bitcoin investment is far more in line with its corporate identity and business services than was the case for MicroStrategy.
- The firm’s Cash app is a critical bitcoin entry point for many retail investors. It has become a major revenue driver for the publicly traded fintech.
