Square CEO Jack Dorsey introduces Square Crypto, a new initiative for open source contributions to the “bitcoin/crypto ecosystem”
Payments startup Square plans to hire a number of engineers and a designer to work on its crypto initiatives, according to tweets from CEO Jack Dorsey.
Context & Ripple Effects
Square Crypto is Jack Dorsey formalizing what had been personal enthusiasm into a company function: rather than building a crypto product, Square funds open-source contributions to the bitcoin ecosystem itself. The follow-on reporting shows this was no side project — Dorsey detailed plans for a team of five engineers and a designer reporting directly to him.
Two years on, the initiative reads as the seed of Square's broader bitcoin strategy: the open-source group evolved into a dedicated business line helping developers build decentralized financial services (Square's TBD unit), which then moved from grants toward shipping products like a Bitcoin-centric decentralized exchange. The 2019 announcement is the origin point of that arc.
First-order effects
- Square begins paying engineers and a designer to improve bitcoin's open-source stack rather than monetize it directly, with the team answering to Dorsey personally — an unusual reporting line that signals board-level commitment.
Second-order effects
- Other payments companies face pressure to match Square's posture: standing apart from bitcoin development now looks like ceding influence over the protocol their future products may depend on.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, corporate-funded open-source teams become a standard way for fintechs to shape bitcoin's direction — shifting influence over the protocol from volunteer maintainers toward companies with payroll budgets, and converting goodwill into product lines like TBD.
The trend: Payments companies are moving from merely accepting cryptocurrency to funding its core development, treating bitcoin as strategic infrastructure they need to help steer.