Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, has always been a staunch supporter of cryptocurrencies. After leaving Twitter, he fully dedicated himself to cryptocurrency financial services company Square and mobile payment app Block. In the first quarter financial report of Block, which was announced today, Dorsey officially declared that they will invest 10% of the gross profit into Bitcoin on a monthly basis.
In the shareholder letter released by Block, Jack Dorsey stated that they plan to allocate 10% of the gross profit from their Bitcoin products to continue investing in Bitcoin each month. According to the publicly available financial report from Block, in the first quarter of 2024, due to the rise in cryptocurrency market prices, Block’s Bitcoin revenue (from selling Bitcoin to customers) was $2.731 billion, accounting for 45% of the total revenue, with a gross profit of $80 million.
If this performance continues until the end of this year, and if Block truly implements this plan, the company is expected to purchase an additional $24 million worth of Bitcoin. As of the time of writing this article, the price of Bitcoin is $59,709, which means they can approximately acquire 401 Bitcoins.
“Bitcoin is what the world needs!” Block actively expands its presence in the Bitcoin space. In the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, Block has invested a total of $220 million in Bitcoin. Jack Dorsey also stated in the shareholder letter, “We are one of the first publicly listed companies to include Bitcoin on our balance sheet.”
As of March 31, Block holds a total of 8,038 Bitcoins, valued at $573 million, making it the seventh-largest Bitcoin holder among publicly listed US companies.
In the shareholder letter, Jack Dorsey mentioned that Block has spent a lot of time on Bitcoin because he believes that the world needs an open currency protocol that is not owned or controlled by any single entity, and Bitcoin is the best, if not the only, option for that. Therefore, Block is actively positioning itself in the Bitcoin space. For example, they launched the Bitcoin wallet, Bitkey, in December last year, and recently announced the completion of the development of three-nanometer chips for Bitcoin mining, in collaboration with a leading global semiconductor foundry. The goal is to provide independent Bitcoin mining chips and their own complete mining system to help alleviate the survival challenges faced by miners after Bitcoin’s halving.
Furthermore, Block has also made its Bitcoin financial blueprint public to facilitate other companies to follow suit. The document explains how the team acquires a significant amount of cryptocurrency without excessively impacting the market, as well as how they custody, secure, and account for Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Although Block currently only allocates less than 3% of its resources to Bitcoin-related projects, Jack Dorsey believes that Bitcoin, as an open currency protocol, will help Block serve global users more quickly.
References: cointelegraph, The Block, coindesk