Block, Inc. was founded by Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and Ex-CEO. is a financial technology company that deepens its full-stack connection with the Bitcoin industry through its subsidiaries. The company spans Bitcoin integration, Bitcoin mining hardware development, open source software development, decentralized finance protocols for the peer-to-peer market, and even payment apps and merchant tools with independent hardware wallets.
Formerly called Square and founded in 2009, the company integrated Bitcoin into its technology products in 2014 through its most well-known subsidiary, Cash App, allowing merchants to accept Bitcoin payments via the app. In 2021, Square Inc officially rebranded Block Inc, doubled its commitment to Bitcoin, affirming its vision for the future that Bitcoin blockchain will play a vital role. Square has become a subsidiary of Block Inc and currently deals primarily in payment terminal technology. Today, the block has around $1 billion on its balance sheet, with an average purchase price of $30,405 per Bitcoin.
Of Block’s subsidiaries and investments, most people have explicitly connected to Bitcoin or blockchain systems such as Cash App, Bitkey, Proto, Spiral, TBD, and Tidal. They all drive Bitcoin adoption at various levels in the industry, increasing the influence and appreciation from the Bitcoin community. Jack Dorsey is a major donor and bootstrapped to a variety of Bitcoin nonprofits and community efforts, including OpenSat, which funds open source Bitcoin development and funds many Nostrols (Bitcoin Native Social Network Protocols).
In an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Miles Suter, and Block’s Product Lead, Miles Suter, shared their vision for the future and insights into Bitcoin’s ideal role. He said, “I think we will achieve our ultimate destiny when Bitcoin is used as everyday money. I think Satoshi, as intended, can operate in a much more global way, as a global financial infrastructure that everyone can access.
Below is a short overview of some of the companies that serve the Bullock Bitcoin-related companies, particularly retailers. This presents an exclusive quote from Suter about how it serves its important role in the path to hyper-bitcoinization.
square
Started in 2009, Square is a Point of Sale (POS) system that allows merchants to accept card payments and manage operations such as inventory, payroll, business loans and more. Square, which served $4 million a year to sellers as of 2024 and processed $241 billion a year, has begun rolling out merchants’ Bitcoin payments at the 2025 Bitcoin Vegas Conference, announces it will be able to seamlessly accept Bitcoin via POS hardware.
The move marks a major milestone in the integration of Bitcoin with retail payment systems, establishing a missing pillar in the business toolkit needed to use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. “The square has more than four million ordinary merchants, just like the best in the business in terms of traditional payment processing.
With Bitcoin’s full stack accounting integration, we want to embrace digital currency, but not because the doors are wide open due to lack of tools. But the vision is bigger than that. “And we will be offering a full stack Bitcoin banking suite specifically designed for small businesses,” Suter adds, leaning towards the growth trends of Bitcoin finance companies and the strategies that dominate Bitcoin news today.
Companies will soon have all the tools to accept Bitcoin payments and will put them directly into the company’s Treasury Department, rather than selling Bitcoin immediately in dollars. If liquidity is needed, they can already put that bitcoin as collateral and get dollar-controlled loans directly into their bank accounts via companies like Unchained. Suter said, “One of my favourite things about this full-stack Bitcoin banking suite is that it democratizes access to Bitcoin Treasury tools that were previously only available to large corporations. I don’t think keeping Bitcoin on your balance sheet should be a Wall Street luxury.”
Cache app
Perhaps the most well-known brand in the block portfolio, Cash App completes the retail payer side where the Hyper-Bitcoinization Engine Block is built. Introduced in 2013, Cash App is a consumer-centric digital wallet with 57 million active users reported in 2024, offering individual-to-person payments, debit cards, stocks, Bitcoin transactions and tax returns. Cash App reported $10 billion in Bitcoin Source revenue in 2024, accounting for 62% of the total by charging about 2% per trade.
The Cash app is also the first mainstream payments app to integrate Lightning, the Bitcoin payment network. This is at the forefront of the industry, generating the most publicly available and best Bitcoin claim revenues, but runs the Lightning network with a 9.7% return. This can only be achieved by ensuring that Bitcoin payments are very efficient and reliable, rather than the yield of strange crypto magic. Suter said, “To me, Bitcoin is already a functional payment network rather than digital gold. It’s more than that. And while I don’t want to go to weeds here, we can confidently say that we have the most talented lightning engineers in the world working on these issues.”
Highly praised for the success of Cash App’s Bitcoin integration, Suter said, “I am very excited about Lightning’s role in making everyday money in Bitcoin, and I believe it is essential from Block Inc.’s perspective to Bitcoin’s future, Satoshi’s original vision, peer-to-peer electronic cash.”
Consumers cannot easily purchase and send Bitcoin via cash apps, but they cannot automate purchases, an investment strategy known as DCA or dollar cost averages.
The combination of Cash App and Square unlocks what technicians call the “flywheel.” This is a term used to describe a self-enhancing loop of consumers and business behavior that can drive businesses to new heights, and is usually not possible if the building blocks of that business logic are missing. Perhaps with these two major integrations, the vision of Bitcoin payments has been dreamed of by early adopters for over a decade, but hasn’t been going very well up to now, but it will ultimately become a reality.
Bit key
Fixed to Bitcoin’s fundamental value proposition (censorship resistance due to individual freedom and self-control), Block has launched a new hardware wallet product called Bitkey. The device is designed specifically for Bitcoin security, which is necessary to move Bitcoin to three different devices using a popular technology called multi-signature (private keys), which decentralizes passwords. Bitkey hardware is the third key stored for server recovery, using the user’s credentials and stored in the Google Drive account of the user selected.
Launched globally in 2024, Bitkey offers a variety of design choices that will leave industry features other hardware wallets. The most major and controversial difference is that it does not display secret key material to users. Unlike all other hardware wallets and most independent Bitcoin and crypto apps, Bitkey hides key material almost entirely from users, and instead offers a variety of well-designed tools to securely protect, recover and inherit Bitcoin. Suter said, “We’ve built Bitkey to expand those who can safely be independent. We’re kidding us that Grandma needs to be independent, but that’s true and we hear countless stories of people reaching out because onboarding was so seamless.”
This device looks like every unit with a unique mixed stone pattern. This is a deep rethink of self-custody, born from deep criticism of the user experience of the traditional Bitcoin seed backup approach. The design has been on the market for just a year and no public data has been released on sales volumes, but it will be interesting to see if they can split the new ground into hardware wallet adoption.
Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/jack-dorseys-block-inc-is-reinventing-finance-bitcoin