Block (Company, fka Square)

Basics

• Fka Square (2-12-2021):

"Square Changes Name to Block, Reflecting CEO Jack Dorsey's Bitcoin Endeavors. Square Crypto will be renamed Spiral."

Square Crypto will be renamed Spiral.

• Publicly traded payments company.
• From Forbes Blockchain 50 (19-2-2020):

"In the third quarter of 2019, Square generated $148 million in revenue from fees charged to users who paid with bitcoin. Just revealed: a service that lets people instantly send and receive crypto payments. Click here to read more."

• From Forbes Blockchain 50 (2-2-2021):

"Two years ago, Square started letting users of Cash App, its peer-to-peer money transfer and digital banking service, buy Bitcoin. The app has grown to 30 million active users. Square generated $1.6 billion in revenue and $32 million in gross profit from Bitcoin in the quarter ended September 30. In October, Square said it had invested $50 million, or 1% of its own total assets, in Bitcoin."

Compliance

• Has a BitLicence since 2018.

Cash App

• Square owned mobile payments network.

Spiral

Basics

• Fka Square Crypto, the division that focuses exclusively on bitcoin, announced (19-9-2019) three new hires to work on open source projects. They call it their: ‘Bitcoin Dream Team’
• According to another company tweet Thursday, Square Crypto is still “deciding what our first project will be,” adding: “There’s no project we won’t consider, as long as it improves or proliferates bitcoin.”
• "Known for (5-3-2020) its popular CashApp and just wrapped up a final quarter of more than $177 million BTC moving through its platform."
• Won a patent for a crypto-related RTP system.

Grants and Funding

• From CoinSpice (5-3-2020):

"Square Crypto Launches Developer Funding for Bitcoin Core, Lightning Network. The first announced grant went to Bitcoin Core developer Jon Atack. “Jon’s been doing Core dev work for almost a year. He’ll still be doing Core dev work, but now he’ll be getting paid for it,” Square Crypto tweeted.

The second instance was awarded to Tankred Hase, a German software engineer and “UX-focused bitcoin dev whose plans include simplifying self-custody of smaller amounts of bitcoin, creating a public key server that makes it possible to text sats and developing a React Native module to make it easy for JavaScript applications to use the LDK.”

“To date, we’ve supplied grants to BTCPayServer and ZmnSCPxj,”"

• Is funding Bitcoin Core. From Decrypt (3-12-2020):

"Gemini today announced the launch of a $200,000 Bitcoin development fund. Called the Gemini Opportunity Fund, $150,000 of the money, in Bitcoin of course, will go straight to Brink, a London non-profit fellowship program to sponsor Bitcoin developers. The developers will work with John Newbery, Brink’s co-founder and executive director, and a Bitcoin Core contributor. Mike Schmidt, another Bitcoin core contributor. Square, the Human Rights Foundation and Kraken are among other donors. Kraken also donated $150,000. So far, the only fellow is Gloria Zhao, a Bitcoin Core contributor fresh from University of California, Berkeley, where she sat as president of its blockchain club."

• According (24-2-2021) to the payment processor’s press release, the company added 3,318 BTC to its treasury for $170 million.

Team

• Jack Dorsey; head/founder
• Steve Lee; team leader and former Google product director (2020 & 2021)
• Arik Sosman; Facebook and BitGo alum
• Valentine Wallace; Lightning Labs alum
• Jeffrey Czyz; Google alum 

Team

• Keith Rabois; ex COO