Jack Dorsey's payment firm Block (SQ) plans a renewed focus on building equipment for bitcoin (BTC) miners and its self-custody crypto wallet, funded

Jack Dorsey's Square to Invest More in Bitcoin Mining and Shut Decentralized 'Web5' Venture

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2024-11-08 07:30:02

Jack Dorsey's payment firm Block (SQ) plans a renewed focus on building equipment for bitcoin (BTC) miners and its self-custody crypto wallet, funded partly by giving up on creating a new decentralized internet dubbed "Web5" and investing less in music streaming app Tidal.

The decision was revealed the same week that Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, promising a far-friendlier environment in the world's largest economy for crypto. Bitcoin mining was an industry he pledged while campaigning to foster — likely welcomed news to a business suffering from dramatically lower profitability following the so-called halving earlier this year, which cut mining rewards by 50%.

"We are scaling back our investment in TIDAL and winding down TBD [the business developing Web5]. This gives us room to invest in our bitcoin mining initiative, which has strong product market fit and a healthy pipeline of demand, and Bitkey, our self-custody wallet for bitcoin," the company said in its third-quarter shareholders letter.

The restructuring isn't a complete surprise as Block said earlier this year that it plans to cut headcount by as much as 10% by the end of 2024, explaining that "the growth of our company has far outpaced the growth of our business and revenue."

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