Square Crypto Lead: ‘The Product We’re Focusing on Is Bitcoin’

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29 July 2019

Square Crypto is focused on bitcoin, not the publicly traded company’s specific products.

That was the message Monday during a Twitter ask-me-anything (AMA) with the head of Square’s crypto team, Steve Lee.

The unit’s playful Twitter account fielded questions from its followers as well as crypto-community luminaries. With tweets signed simply “Steve,” it was Lee’s first set of public remarks on the team’s broad objectives since being hired in June.

Probably the single most illuminating moment of the AMA was this exchange:

Many participants seemed to assume that Square Crypto had been built to improve how the payments company serves its existing crypto users. Square’s Cash App has been steadily earning more money on sales of bitcoin, bringing in $65.5 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2019 alone.

However, enhancing the Cash App’s crypto functionality is not the team’s focus, Lee said, as a tweet similar to the one above made even more clear:

That said, Lee’s response to a question about supporting bitcoin core made it sound like the team has another vision for the best use of its resources:

More on Square Crypto’s design sensibility has been shared on Medium.

Lee appears to be the team’s only hire so far. The Square Crypto account largely dodged questions about team size, but it did make clear that it’s close to bringing on another developer:

One participant asked the account why the company wasn’t creating its own token, like so many companies in the last few years. Square Crypto responded by posting a tweet from the company’s founder:

Jack Dorsey image via CoinDesk archives