Square’s Cash app jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon back in January this year, when it started letting users buy, sell, and hodl Bitcoin in the app. The company recently unveiled its first quarter results, which show the cryptocurrency brought the company $200,000 in profit.
The Cash app earned the company the funds without charging fees, as Square charges none to trade Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency’s price fluctuations, as Markets Insider notes, essentially helped Square sell $34.1 million worth of BTC, at a cost of $33.9 million.
Square founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, who’s also in charge of Twitter, is a well-known Bitcoiner. As covered, Dorsey revealed he believes Bitcoin will become the world’s “single currency” by 2028. Per his words, Bitcoin is a “transformational technology.”
According to Markets Insider, Nomura Instinet analyst Dan Dolev commented on Square’s Bitcoin earnings, saying:
“If they actually charged a fee as some of their competitors do, that number would be much higher. They're just basically testing out, allowing people who don't normally trade Bitcoin to trade Bitcoin.”
Notably, the company isn’t depending on Bitcoin for a large portion of its revenues, but Dolev revealed its popularity showed potential. Per his own research, 60 percent of Square merchants are willing to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. As such, the company could in the future charge fees, once cryptocurrencies are used in day-to-day transactions.
Moreover, adding Bitcoin to the Cash App likely spurred downloads and brought Square new users, Dolev noted. In this year’s first quarter, the app had 7 million monthly active users, and remained one of the top 25 apps in Apple’s App store.
Per Dolev, while Bitcoin has the potential to help Square improve, the company doesn’t depend on the cryptocurrency. According to him, even if it dropped to zero, Square would still be successful.
When it comes to Bitcoin trading, Square currently faces competition from Coinbase, which reached over $1 billion in revenue last year, and Robinhood, a popular mobile stock trading app that recently introduced cryptocurrencies to its services.
