The shareholder says that the flagship product of Square, payments app and lite-Bitcoin exchange Cash App, received $125 million in income from BTC in the second fiscal quarter of 2019.
More than 90% of Square's subscription, facilities, and transaction bucket income came from its Bitcoin exchange barebones, which promotes easy buying and selling. Because of the small profit margins in the exchange company, the company produced up $2 million in gross profit in connection with Bitcoin.
According to an assessment of the company's history with Bitcoin by The Block, BTC earnings from Cash App are nearly double (90 percent) that of last quarter, during which the company snagged profits of $65.5 million. Revenues from Q2 2019 also rose more than 240 percent from Q2 2018.
The rapid uptick in interest can be attributed to two things: Firstly, the value of Bitcoin skyrocketed from the start of Q2 to the end of Q2. In fact, if Square follows a normal fiscal quarter, BTC rallied by approximately 200% during the quarter, moving from $4,000 to the $12,000 region.
With this rapid swing higher, which caught many bears with their pants down, trading volumes across exchanges the industry over spiked, which was a trend supported by an increase in the mainstream coverage of cryptocurrency.
Secondly, the so-called “stacking satoshis” movement, which sports the memorable hashtag #stackingsats, gained lots of traction this quarter.
Popularized by Matt Odell, Marty Bent, American HODL, and other personalities on Bitcoin Twitter, this movement promotes the repeated purchase of small portions of BTC through Cash App.
While it isn’t clear how much of Square’s Bitcoin revenues is related to devotees of the stacking movement, it likely hasn’t hurt.
Square’s rapidly growing Bitcoin exchange business comes as the fintech firm’s crypto division has brought on its first staffer. Announced back in mid-June, the Jack Dorsey-headed firm brings on Steve Lee, a former director of Google, where he headed work on Google Maps, and an ongoing evangelist for and contributor to Bitcoin.
The Silicon Valley veteran also is an angel investor of Lyft, Pinterest, and other technology startups. It isn’t clear exactly what Lee’s role is at Square Crypto, or what the Google alumnus is currently working on.
The firm is currently looking for open blockchain developers but has been quite picky with who to choose, claiming that it has received over “1,500” resumes. Square is expected to make its first developer hire in the coming weeks.
By the end of the hiring period, chief executive of both Square and Twitter, Jack Dorsey, will have handpicked one or two designers and three to four blockchain developers. Dorsey’s vision is to promote the viability and use of public blockchains.
For now, Square Crypto’s staff will be focusing on Bitcoin. In a recent “ask me anything” on Twitter, Lee took some time to answer some of the crypto community’s inquiries about the project. During that, Lee explained that his division will be “focusing on Bitcoin”, noting that it has the longest lifespan of any cryptocurrency and needs to be worked on a lot to achieve mass adoption.
This is in line with Dorsey's vision of sharing it with comedian-turned-legendary podcaster Joe Rogan and cryptocurrency-friendly Quartz outlet. Through those outlets, he said that he thinks Bitcoin is best suited for becoming the indigenous currency of the Internet.
