November 17, 2025 • 73 mins
Marty sits down with Miles Suter to discuss Block's eight-year journey building Bitcoin infrastructure across Cash App, Square, and BitKey, culminating in the launch of Bitcoin payments for all Square sellers nationwide.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Like I just said, eight years in the making.
It's a pleasure to be here, Marty, and yeah, it's a real long time coming.
Well, the pleasure is mine.
It's hard to treat you like you're a guest because you're such a good friend.
I've often referred to you, and I truly mean this, and I think it stays true to this day,
that you are the most underrated man in Bitcoin because of all the work
(00:20):
that you've been doing behind the scenes, first at Cash App, and now at Block more broadly.
And we're here today at Cash App Releases, the event announcing everything that the Cash App team is working on and releasing.
And I don't want any spoilers. This will come out after it.
But it's pretty sick what you guys are launching.
(00:40):
But not only at Cash App, I was at the Proto release party in Georgia in August.
That was incredible, I think.
The Bitcoin mining community and industry is very excited for you guys getting into the hardware business there.
And obviously, over the last week, Square point of sale terminals have released Bitcoin
functionalities to all Square sellers across the country.
(01:03):
So you guys have been shipping like crazy this year.
It's been a wild couple of weeks, couple of days, couple of weeks and even months.
But it's a core principle of Block Inc., the parent company of all these Bitcoin initiatives.
initiatives, but it's a core principle to show, not tell.
And so, yeah, it kind of blows my mind as well that this is kind of my first
(01:28):
real podcast that I've done, but I couldn't,
I wouldn't have done it with anybody else just because of our long history
together and just like our deep, deep friendship in,
since the early days of Bitcoin, trying to will this thing into existence.
Well, we were just talking about it.
I think we need to tell some more stories because I think many people got into Bitcoin, particularly post-2020, don't understand how hard it was being a Bitcoiner.
(01:56):
And from the 2013 to 2019 era, I would say, I think when Saylor came in, when stimulus checks started hitting post-COVID, people really began to realize the profundity of Bitcoin and why they should hold it as an asset and use it as money.
but before then it was like we were wandering in the desert trying to convince people that this is something worth paying attention to.
(02:21):
It was a very lonely endeavor, totally.
And Twitter was often the place, Twitter is where I met you.
And for many years it felt like kind of screaming out into the void.
None of my friends really cared to listen to me or were convinced enough.
(02:43):
I was the crazy Bitcoin friend for many, many years.
And I think there's something about Bitcoiners, especially early Bitcoiners,
where they have the tenacity within them to stick with their beliefs.
I feel like we've always known in the back of our heads, like, are we a little crazy?
But no, no, no, this really makes sense.
(03:05):
But it was a lonely process for a long time and I remember a lot of those early days on
Twitter feeling so relieved where there's people like you that understand the intellectual
journey that I've similarly been on, can understand the social isolation in many cases of not
being able to talk to your family or your friends, your college professors or people
(03:28):
that you think are smart that should have grokked this thing, but is a very solitary
mission.
But I think it's made us all really strong in the long run.
But yeah, I look back fondly of the days of Twitter of feeling it's like, oh, Marty
Bent, my first real Bitcoin friend, or Matt Odell, or Jack Mallers, Mr. Hoddle.
(03:51):
These are the first people that I relate to and feel like deep, deep connection intellectually,
but also sort of like spiritually as we hopped on this mission together.
Yeah, as you're describing that journey, it's very ironic, the correct word, but the
fact that we all met on Twitter, which was founded by Jack Dorsey, and then we're here
(04:15):
discussing what you guys are building a block, which was also founded by Jack Dorsey, is
incredibly poetic in a way because similarly, I was in this city. I lived in New York at
the time. I'd been into Bitcoin since college. I was in Chicago, but I came here and I was
just by myself on the internet, obsessed with looking for others. And obviously there was
(04:37):
public Twitter conversations, but sometimes the best conversations happen in DMs where
it's like, okay, what do we need to do? And I think you're an incredible example of someone
who saw the big vision and is using your knowledge and your expertise and your ability to build
things to join a large company like Block and basically imbue it with Bitcoin. And obviously
(05:01):
Jack is all on board and this is part of the DNA of the Block family of businesses. And I think
for people who haven't or aren't familiar with the sort of timeline of the integration of Bitcoin
across blocks companies, maybe it's a good time to just describe what the early days of Cash App
(05:23):
were like and why you guys decided to lean into Bitcoin. Sure. And I just want to start with
saying I don't think there's any company in the world doing more for Bitcoin than Block Inc. And
I appreciate you recognizing the way we've approached this.
And we've always tried to do it with a ton of principle and with the long run in mind.
(05:46):
For us, for me, for Jack, for everybody working on Bitcoin at the company,
the mission is so much more important than the money.
And we try to keep that core to what we're doing at all times.
And I mean, like, the gains when I say the money.
because we believe that Bitcoin's ultimate destiny is to become what Satoshi wanted,
(06:09):
peer-to-peer electronic cash.
And so one of our overarching company missions is to make Bitcoin everyday money.
And we've taken really intentional steps over the eight years that I've been at the company
to really push forward that evolution sequentially.
and it started in 2017 when I joined Cash App. Jack and Donji, our current CTO, were doing a
(06:41):
Hack Week project. Jack had asked him, can you integrate Bitcoin into Cash App? And Cash App
was really small. At this time, it was an email-to-email-based system that was just kind of
piloted internally for moving money around and was kind of at the very early stages.
(07:03):
Maybe a bit more, a bit beyond that, but that's how it started a couple of years before.
And I knew someone on the Cash App side and for years I'd wanted to work in Bitcoin.
And as I said to many of my friends from college, I was the crazy Bitcoin friend that they wanted
to shut up talking about it as the night got later on the weekends or at the bar.
(07:29):
Like eventually, I think you and many listeners can relate is that once you get the mind virus,
it's like everything ultimately comes back to Bitcoin and you just want and you want to share
it with everybody. And so I annoyed all of my friends for a long time, but at least that
reputation stuck in because when they wanted to production, I was bringing Bitcoin to cash out
(07:52):
to actual customers, there wasn't a ton of DNA on the team.
And so my friend introduced me to Jack, introduced me to the leadership team at Cash App.
And I joined in June and helped productionize that and bring it to market as the first public
company to support Bitcoin, period.
(08:15):
And why do you think it was important for a company like Cash App at the time to do that,
having been in Bitcoin for many years at that point?
Well, for me, it was just an amazing opportunity.
I'd wanted to work in Bitcoin for years,
but there weren't a lot of jobs available.
I had applied to Coinbase in 2013,
(08:37):
but it was mostly engineering,
and they were small and the future is super uncertain.
I just started another job as well.
And so it's hard to look back,
or for people that are newer, it's hard to understand
how uncertain things felt
way back in the day. And I think we owe a lot of that certainty and conviction
(09:00):
and stability now to a lot of the early moves
of companies like Cash App and the many, many other
contributors that helped get us to this point. But I mean, there were unbelievable
hurdles to jump through as the first public company.
not only regulatory wise, not just with the government, but even internally within Square.
(09:23):
It was just Square at the time. Square SQ was what had IPO'd, what everybody knew was the big brand.
And CashUp was the little brother within the company and was actually losing a ton of money.
It was actually potentially disastrous for the entire company if they didn't find a sustainable business model.
But right around that same time on Cash App, things started to click and I wouldn't credit it all to Bitcoin
(09:51):
or even most of it to Bitcoin. Bitcoin certainly provided a nice boost there and brought a lot of attention to it to the broader
sort of market and audience. But right around that time we clicked and found a sustainable growth model as well and
it really coincided that we took on like
(10:11):
exponential growth at that point.
So almost from the day I started,
it was kind of strap your seatbelt in and get going.
And ultimately, we're now at the point,
we scaled like crazy over the last six, eight,
I mean four, like throughout my entire time,
(10:33):
we've been scaling like crazy.
And I remember talking with Owen,
who's now head of business across all of Block, Inc.
But we looked at each other in 2017 or 2018,
and Apple had just come out with their wallet.
Venmo was so far ahead of us in terms of people
knowing where they were and actual user counts and volume
(10:53):
and all of them.
We looked at each other and it's like,
if we do this, if we actually catch these guys,
this is going to be crazy.
This is going to be some sort of movie, looking back on it.
And at this point, we're at 58 million monthly users.
We're one of the biggest debit card programs in all of the US.
And so it's been an incredible journey integrating Bitcoin into this ecosystem,
(11:21):
but also growing that broader ecosystem as well.
Yeah.
The stat I just saw downstairs, you've helped 24 million customers get on board to Bitcoin as well.
Some of it may be small, but some of it's certainly large.
Well, that's actually one of the things I'm most proud about in terms of
Who does Cash App serve and who are its customers?
(11:41):
It's not people on Wall Street for the most part.
It's not people that have a lot of financial privilege.
It's Americans from a hugely diverse set of backgrounds, whether geographically, socioeconomically.
And for me, that's what Bitcoin has always been about, getting better money into the hands of the people,
(12:06):
not the corporations, not the government or the hedge funds.
It's like Bitcoin is for the people.
And that's kind of always been core to my ethos in this space.
Thinking back to 2017 when you joined and launched Bitcoin and Cash App,
at the time Bitcoin was eight years old, which is crazy to think.
It's like incredibly young, nascent distributed protocol to really lean into.
(12:30):
So the fact that you guys had that forward-looking view
and took the risk lean in at that time.
Again, I will say like as a Bitcoiner,
when you guys started leaning into it,
I was like, this is exactly what we need.
Some legitimacy from a brand that is perceived
by most people in the United States
to be completely legitimate.
Where at the time, every exchange
(12:52):
was sort of a startup that nobody could really trust.
But with that being said,
launched eight years into the protocol.
It's been eight years since almost exactly to the date.
And Bitcoin's evolved a lot. The protocols evolved. The layers on top of the protocol have evolved, which has enabled you guys to enable a lot more features, particularly around Bitcoin, lightning payments, send, receive being one of the biggest that I can think of.
(13:22):
But we were talking about this downstairs.
This year, across the block, sub-companies or a family of companies,
it's been incredibly impressive to watch the speed at which you've been shipping,
not only the Bitcoin-related products just in general,
but as it pertains to the Bitcoin-related products.
(13:42):
Is that a function of just organizational efficiency that been gained over the years or do you guys think the timing is right for these products to be released and there an opportunity to take advantage of So the point I left a little unfinished before when talking about cash being a small
part of Square at that time was that we faced a lot of internal opposition, even.
(14:05):
Bitcoin's boiling in the ocean.
Bitcoin is X.
Bitcoin is Y. And getting alignment at a big company can be difficult.
But over those eight years, we've done a lot of internal education.
We've brought in new people that are really excited about Bitcoin.
And so I think there's a lot more unity and commitment to the cause.
And I think that starts with Jack at the top.
(14:26):
And I think we recently had a, we flew all 10,000 people from the company out for a company birthday party, essentially.
It was our 16th birthday.
It's a square number.
everybody was in Oakland and we did like essentially like a very high
production two-day conference inside the Oakland arena and the talk of the town
(14:50):
leaving that was Bitcoin about how Bitcoin showed up the biggest at that
conference and how so many people left with the impression like oh my god I
I finally understand Bitcoin now.
Because I think one of the most impactful panels that we had there was Jack interviewed a number of human rights activists from around the world that are using Bitcoin in amazing circumstances.
(15:19):
Circumstances of extreme difficulty and resilience.
And I think that really resonated with so much of the company that maybe is further away from the work and helped us understand as Americans or people in first world countries just how much financial privilege we have and that Bitcoin is for everyone.
And then there were other sessions on Bitcoin as well.
(15:41):
But just a little sidetrack that like it's been a long process, just like orange pilling the world or your family is a process.
I think the same process has happened internally.
So I think that's really good.
And that's really important.
About a year ago, we also shifted to a functional model
within the company that has allowed us to be a lot more
(16:06):
intentional and deliberate with our Bitcoin products, what
we're shipping, and what is the overall vision?
How do these different things come together?
And like you mentioned, there's been so many announcements
launches in the last few months in particular.
(16:27):
And I think, I mean, this week was so exciting for me because the Square Payments thing was
something of really great importance for our company, but for Bitcoin as a whole, I think.
Even when I started in 2017, people were asking me, like, when Square?
(16:48):
When Lightning?
So like finally be able to do it is a huge, huge milestone.
And I think a number of the features that you saw previewed today at cash releases, I think, pair into that really well for what the evolution of Bitcoin can continue to look like and what it can mean for a major financial firm to be increasingly leaning into these primitives and the capabilities behind it.
(17:19):
them.
Yeah, and since we're releasing this on Monday and we're not going to break any embargo,
we can talk about it.
I mean, the pay a Bitcoin invoice, we hit record, there's some lore behind that particular application.
Yeah, so this feature is something that was the core primitive for how Strike was
(17:47):
actually started.
brilliant model because it allows lightning invoices to be paid with dollars, which avoids
any sort of taxable event for the sender, which has been one of the limiting factors
that people talk about when why Bitcoin payments won't exist or won't take off, especially
(18:09):
before some de minimis exception comes out.
But the deep, deep lore is I pulled out an email from, as I mentioned earlier, Jack and
I go way back.
We're great friends.
And that's the beauty of Bitcoin is he has an app that is essentially, I would call it
a Bitcoin native version of Cash App.
(18:31):
And they've been doing tremendously well and successful and it's been awesome to see their
success because as one part of the network grows, the other benefits as well.
and that's something we share in conviction
is like how the open network wins.
And it's really unique about our industry
where we can cheer for our competition.
Oh, I had this experience downstairs
(18:52):
where I paid an invoice from Square POS terminal,
and I pulled up Primal app, which is using Strike
on the back end paid, and boom, Strike to Cash App
interoperable.
Yep.
And so just the more people using Bitcoin,
the stronger the overall network is,
and the more successful my company is going to be,
and the more successful every Bitcoin company is going to be.
(19:13):
And so, yeah, side quest there.
But the funny part is, is like the foundational idea for Strike
was actually emailed to me from Jack on November 1st, 2019,
because we were talking about doing it for a Cash App
Internal Hack Week.
(19:33):
And so it was like, what a, that brought like a swell to my heart
looking at that, like, oh man, simple days back then.
and made me super proud to see the growth of the industry, the growth of my friends in the industry,
and how far things have come from that day since.
Yeah, and it's been very obvious the last six months, particularly, that Bitcoin is everyday money,
(19:54):
is a core focus.
It seems like over the last few years, many in the Bitcoin space,
if you're not paying attention to what's happening on the ground in terms of payments,
innovation, whether it's cash humans,
ARC protocol,
the maturation of lightning, many people
become convinced that Bitcoin
is simply digital gold that you're supposed to
(20:15):
buy, hold, never sell, never
spend, try to
speculative attack
the credit system to get more Bitcoin.
But like you
mentioned earlier, the goal
at Block is to make sure that Bitcoin is
everyday money. And what would you
say to people that say it's not
wise to go after that medium of exchange use case right now?
(20:36):
Yeah, so we have a three-part sort of approach for how we've served the Bitcoin community
and ecosystem to get to that end goal that I'll circle back to at some point.
But we believe with conviction that in order for Bitcoin to maintain the attributes that
(20:59):
make it so unique, namely censorship resistance, it requires velocity.
Storing it in ETFs or on corporate treasuries and just having it sit idle there, it loses
the very thing that attracted people like you and me to it originally.
(21:22):
And so we believe that in order for Bitcoin to truly succeed, for it to become the native
currency of the internet, we want it to be used every day.
And we think that we are uniquely positioned to help push this.
And so just like I mentioned earlier that when we launched Cash App, on Cash App a lot of
(21:44):
people were like, you guys are a little crazy and you're a little early.
And not many people know, even before that, in 2013, on that bull run, Square actually
debuted on-chain acceptance through a third party before rolling it back after not a lot of people
accepted. I remember walking to the coffee shop around the corner from me in San Francisco
(22:08):
in Nob Hill and it was clunky and the barista didn't know how to use it. And you'd see this
at all the kind of attempts at introducing payments to the mainstream to date is that there was always
was a sidecar or the training was difficult or the Bitcoin person isn't in right now.
(22:28):
You can't pay in Bitcoin.
And so I think the seamlessness of what we've launched on Square recently is going to be
a huge part of why the odds of this clicking and growing and progressing to where we hope
(22:49):
it to get to be is different this time.
And you asked me earlier, like, is what's changed or like why is now the right time?
Like today is the right time to do it.
Tomorrow would be the right time to do it.
If not us, then who?
You know, it feels like it's reaching a point where we need to.
(23:13):
It's almost like which way?
Western man.
Yeah.
And we feel strongly that that this is the direction Bitcoin should go and people should
vote with their feet, vote with their sats.
And to see the response from the community
the last few days on Twitter has been truly unbelievable.
I just, I've always loved, occasionally they make me crazy,
(23:38):
but seeing like the community engagement
and how inspired people have been to deputize themselves,
to go sign up their local Square merchants,
to tell them to turn on Bitcoin
because they want to pay them in Bitcoin,
because they want this virtuous cycle to flow.
It's like there's so many beautiful people in this space
and so many people that are so mission driven
(23:58):
that it's an honor to be a part of it so frequently.
And there's massive benefits to the sellers
for incorporating it, both if you do cash
and you put a portion of that in the Bitcoin right away,
but on the payment side, from a fee perspective,
it makes a lot of sense to enable Bitcoin payments.
The merchants understand it right away,
(24:18):
even normie merchants.
And I think what's really unique about what we've launched,
Jack had a great tweet, but our merchants can now
accept payments in four different ways.
Bitcoin to Bitcoin, so customers sending Bitcoin,
merchant receiving Bitcoin, holding it as Bitcoin.
You can go BTC to fiat, so that means automatically converting
(24:40):
it into dollars for these normie sellers
that I was talking about.
They want to save 3%, but they don't want to hold Bitcoin.
They'll do that any day.
You know, it's like, I don't even have to think
about the Bitcoin, yeah, sure, sign me up, turn it on.
If people want to pay me that way, great.
The flip side of what we've also built
is what we called our conversions product.
And so that is where daily card sales come through.
(25:03):
People are tapping as they buy their coffees.
You said a percentage that you want converted
and DCA'd into Bitcoin on a daily basis.
And I actually think that's the product
that's going to take off more immediately than payment.
That's kind of the equivalent of what I like,
(25:23):
the parallel to Cash App that really we saw by sell
and like being up increasing accessibility
as the first step of people's journey into Bitcoin.
I think that's where people can start really small,
get a little bit of exposure, see how it affects their cash
flows, and then observe it over time.
That yes, this thing's volatile, but it
(25:45):
trends towards, trends only in one direction on a long enough time frame.
And so I really love that daily conversions feature.
And then you can still take fiat to fiat payments as well.
But we built a fully native Bitcoin banking stack for the 4 million merchants across the U.S.
(26:05):
And it's really a first in the world integration that it's not just bolted on.
it's truly deeply integrated into the tools that you already know and love within Square.
So that means your loyalty still works and your gift cards still work.
There's just being part of the ecosystem.
(26:25):
I think Bitcoin is an incredible new part of the Square experience.
And we're seeing great excitement out the gates.
And I think we're still, just like Cashflow, I think we're early on the payment stuff.
We very well may be early, but we have a history of taking principled early bets.
(26:50):
And from this foundation, I think the genie's out of the bottle.
And it'll just grow and grow as more merchants come to appreciate that there's no fees for accepting Bitcoin.
There's no chargebacks.
And you don't have to wait at all to get access to your funds.
and in an increasingly digital world, those are three very important attributes for people trying to make a,
(27:10):
for hardworking Americans trying to make a living running their business.
Yeah, well, and to that last point, hardworking Americans trying to make a living.
I know this is something that we've talked about over the eight years,
we've known each other. I think we both very much view Bitcoin as a tool to get us closer to a future
(27:31):
which more humans are free.
That is your Twitter bio I deeply care about human freedom I think that where we really connect We got into Bitcoin with anti industrial complex
sort of ethos, and we're both children of the great financial crisis.
I'll just speak for myself when I saw that and everything that happened
(27:54):
in the early 2010s as it relates to WikiLeaks, Snowden,
it became clear to me there needs to be an alternative.
It feels like Bitcoin is that, and that's why I've dedicated my life to it.
But as time's progressed and you look at the political discourse in the country right now and how polarized everything is,
and in my view, everybody's wiping up branches when they're missing the core of the problem, which is that the money's broken.
(28:19):
And I've written about this many times the last few weeks as you guys have continued to roll out these products.
This is massive to me because I think Bitcoin is that sly roundabout way to fix a lot of the social issues which are seeped in economic stress in the United States without having to ask politicians to fix it for us.
(28:41):
And so by enabling 4 million square merchants to get onboarded to Bitcoin, whether that's receiving payments, letting their users or their customers paying Bitcoin or simply sweeping some of their fiat revenues into Bitcoin to sit on their treasury.
To me, that is more impactful than trying to fix the economic issues that exist in America today by going to D.C. and asking them to fix it for us.
(29:08):
I think that's extremely well said.
And I resonate a lot with your journey, as we've talked about over the many years.
But, I mean, I'm old school.
Like, I came to Bitcoin.
I found Bitcoin in the zero-hedge comment section in 2011, which, I mean, if there was ever a spot that Marty Jones would feel right at home at, it's those zero-hedge comment sections.
(29:37):
But I say I'm old school because for me it was always about constraining the power of
the state to act in an unethical manner.
I was very red-pillowed about the foreign adventurism of the US military and the pain
we were causing in the Middle East.
(29:58):
Back then there wasn't, it's pretty mainstream to be like, oh yeah, those wars were a disaster
these days.
in 2011 or 15, 10, back in 2011 or those days, it was not like you're still kind of an outsider
if you're doing that. It's been positive to see the way things have changed, but there was a lot
(30:22):
tighter grip on cultural consensus back then, I think. And I think that that same thing is true of
money where people are asking what is money and like it's kind of culturally understood like oh
yeah they just print as much of it as up and there's no constraint on it yada yada yada but
you ask people but back then have you ever thought about what money is and be like shut up don't care
(30:48):
you know like things are stable but I don't it's not really of concern to me so I think that is a
positive that people do feel more conscious about these macro things.
I think there's a lot further to go in a number of these areas.
(31:11):
But as you mentioned, to me, Bitcoin has always been,
I'm blanking on it.
Bitcoin is civil disobedience, is a tweet out I put out a number of years ago.
And I believe that it is opting out.
It is putting your weight behind building a better, fairer system.
(31:37):
And I think that's been core to my journey.
And so just to tie it back to what you said about at Block,
We want to make Bitcoin everyday money.
And to get there, we believe we have
to make it more accessible.
We need to make it more secure.
And then we need to make it more usable.
And going back to your timeline question,
(32:00):
Cash App was all about making it accessible,
making it instantly available for millions of people
across the US.
We're doing the same thing now with Square, where people
can get their first touches on it, experience it,
and increase usability and accessibility.
So the second sort of like bucket of projects that we look at is making it more secure.
Like if Bitcoin is going to be around for generations and the future of the entire global financial system,
(32:25):
we need it to be secure. We need it to be decentralized.
And so that inspired our investments in both BitKey and Proto.
With BitKey, we're making it more secure to hold your own keys, to have it be recoverable and introduce self-custody
to a whole new audience.
This is self-custody that my grandma can use.
(32:48):
And with Proto, we felt it was really important
to offer an American company alternative
to kind of like the duopoly that comes from China
and has a mixed bag of reviews from the many people
like Deep in the Mining, you know all about it.
So many Deep in the Mining industry.
(33:08):
I can speak for a lot of us where it's like, thank God,
there's a competitor to Bitmain and MicroBT.
Just because Bitmain specifically is not as customer forward as somebody like Proto.
We really hope to change that.
And then in making Bitcoin more usable,
(33:29):
I think it's about showing these opportunities of how and why you should be using Bitcoin every day
and ultimately progress it on its path to everyday money.
And so we talked about some of the merchant benefits,
the no fees, no chargebacks, instant availability.
But then what is that, how do we make it even simpler
(33:51):
from the cash-up side of things?
And so we talked a little bit about a product that,
internally we called it Dollars on Lightning for a long time,
basically the strike model.
Preserve your stack while still letting the merchant receive Bitcoin
and take advantage of Bitcoin, the network, and then perhaps the asset as well, or perhaps fiat.
(34:15):
But I think the next sort of step from this product that I think is really, really exciting is,
so everybody in Strike is like Bitcoin native. Everybody within Cash App using Lightning
with the Bitcoin as the foundation
is
Bitcoin native or like they understand
(34:37):
Bitcoin to some extent. But in
any given month, it's like single digit
monthly actives
of Bitcoin customers. But we
have this top of funnel of
58 million monthly actives.
And so that's 50
plus million people
active on the app each month
that we can introduce the
Lightning Network to without even
(34:59):
knowing what
Bitcoin is or what Lightning is. By letting them use that US dollar balance that they all have,
I think it's a step towards onboarding the next tens of millions of people onto Bitcoin without
even requiring them to know what it is. And so I think that's a big part in sort of connecting
(35:21):
the ecosystem. And I think it's all going to be driven by economic incentives. I think when
merchants are saving money on processing fees,
they can pass that back to customers
who are increasingly conscious of the fading value
of their dollar, that their salary's not keeping up
with inflation, that their taxes keep rising.
That it's hard to be an American.
(35:44):
It's hard to be, I have a lot of empathy
for people in America that are struggling.
I think far too often we don't call those people out
or they're ignored.
But I also want to recognize that I'm super passionate
about people in the developing world who have it much, much
harder as well, which is why I paused.
(36:06):
But at least on the catch up side of things,
things are harder.
And so I think meaningful, like getting 1% back
in Bitcoin from the merchant because you scan this QR code
instead of swiping your card, I think that's meaningful.
And that's something that we want to lean a lot into.
The other feature that we launched this week at Cash Releases
(36:27):
is what we're calling Bitcoin Maps.
And so a lot of what we love to do things
that are good for our company, but good for the community
as well.
And we love open source is core to the block, Inc. DNA.
Going back to our little timeline before, in 2019,
We started a wing of the company called Spiral that's led by Steve Lee.
(36:51):
We have 10 full-time people where all they do is work on Bitcoin.
And Jack can't tell Steve or that team what to work on.
They're just completely independent, just funded by Block Inc.
We've probably given 100 grants to people on every continent around the world.
And so they're doing really important work growing the open source ecosystem.
And that's just open source Bitcoin.
(37:12):
Doc has a head of open source within the company.
Our AI initiative, Goose, is all about open source as well.
Open source is really core to what we're doing.
We do a lot at the company.
Obviously, I'm focusing only on Bitcoin.
But there's a lot of cool stuff going on across the company that I encourage everybody to look
(37:33):
into.
Back to the map.
We used an open source framework, btcmap.org.
This was just like a volunteer based thing where people are tagging stores that accept
Bitcoin and it works across the entire globe.
And it's actually really fun to zoom out, zoom in and kind of like see where's all the
action.
(37:55):
But with the Square integration, we made it so every merchant that turns on payments is
given a pop up, a quick yes or no.
Do you want to be added to the Bitcoin map to get free advertising to this rabid bunch
of people that are part of this movement that want to kick off the flywheel of Bitcoin payment
(38:16):
adoption.
And so it's really cool to have both sides of the network where these merchants are popping
up on the map and then our engaged consumers on this side can use the map as a hub to go
find these consumer incentives to go chase these deals and support this protocol.
Support this protocol like Johnny Appleseed with Bitcoin at these new places, but also
(38:39):
we can point the normies in here too if we're getting meaningful rewards back in some of these
places from the savings of processing. And so we're calling those quests. We're going to be able to
send people on quests to go find merchants that are doing a promotion or want to accept Bitcoin
(39:00):
and get things back within Cash App. And the second part of what we're launching in the next
version of the map is what we're calling Quest.
And this is what I mentioned earlier.
And I put out a video tweet for the first time in my life.
I'll be like, hey, guys.
But it was actually super fun and had
amazing reaction of engaged Bitcoiners around the country,
(39:22):
going to their local coffee shop that uses Square,
convincing them to turn on Bitcoin payments,
and then doing a payment.
And I said, hey, I'll pay out a bounty to anybody
that will do this.
We'll automate this process.
Yesterday was just a scrappy version,
but I was blown away with the response
and definitely something we're gonna productionize
and automate to happen automatically.
(39:43):
But I just, I'm pretty caught up in the moment
just wanted to keep all the excitement
and energy going yesterday.
So I think that was a big success.
I saw our friend Paul Keating
was really putting up numbers yesterday.
I think he put up six merchants on the island of Kauai.
You know, can't be that many merchants.
We'll get them all pretty soon.
Well, to any merchants who are new to this podcast and listening in because Miles is on,
(40:07):
just go look at Steak and Shake.
They came out with some financials.
They saw a 15% uplift in revenue when they announced Bitcoin.
Store over store sales or whatever.
I forget what that metric is called.
It was material gross in there.
And the revenue, like the Bitcoiners are sort of a rabid consumer base that is looking to
Johnny Appleseed Bitcoin adoption.
(40:27):
So they will treat you well.
And I think this gets to another thing, like moving forward, not only for Block, but for Bitcoin.
Like, what do you think is most critical as we move further into sort of this inflection point of human history, fourth earning, whatever you want to call it?
(40:49):
So I think we have a lot of pieces in place for Bitcoin.
And you know what, through all the cycles, I'm constantly shocked by the surprises that
come through and like the brief heart attacks or not so brief heart attacks as things inevitably
go wrong.
(41:09):
But I'm always shocked by the resilience and the people.
And I think we have a lot of the right things in place.
And ultimately, we're doing everything we can as a company to make sure Bitcoin is resilient,
decentralized secure accessible and used by people all around But it takes more than us and it takes the community But I think what we seen in the past is even when we early we see others follow
(41:39):
And so I hope that, as I mentioned, open network, like the more people, the more point of sales
companies accepting Bitcoin, the better. Please go copy the products and turn on, get even more
merchants converting their daily sales each and every day. To me, these blue collar and
high-end places as well using Square, to me, these are the real Bitcoin treasury companies,
(42:05):
the ones using proof of work every day to put the Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
And that's sort of like a speculative attack that aligns much more with my ethos and what
gets me excited.
I saw Parker in Sahil down in Austin spending Bitcoin at what used to be my favorite local
grocer, which is Local Pastures.
(42:26):
Well, the best.
You have Sam Moffitt, who's been on the show before.
He runs Shirtail Creek Farms.
They have the best eggs I've ever had in my life.
Incredible ground beef.
They were an early beta tester that we got on board.
And Sam came on the show, and I think after he was on the show, Parker and I were like,
hey, this guy wants to get in.
But at the time, this was a year, year and a half ago,
(42:47):
he was curious but didn't have the tools to do it.
And it seems like you guys have made that really easy.
And I remember what I wanted to ask earlier
when we were on this thread of seller adoption.
I remember a couple weeks ago when I sent a tweet out
when you guys announced something related to the Square POS.
Somebody responded.
They've been in a beta test for two years.
(43:07):
And their comment was,
I'm extremely excited for all other Square sellers
to get access to this
because it's been incredibly beneficial for me and my business.
Is there any sort of data or KPIs from that beta test that you can point to?
So I think actually the most interesting way to answer this
is to go through the timeline of how this all came to be.
(43:30):
As I mentioned, there's a lot more internal alignment within the last year.
I have a lot more mandate to make things happen across Cash, Square, and Bickey.
And there's just been a lot of things shifting
that have put us in a good position
to execute really quickly and ship things.
But the test that we're talking about,
(43:54):
we did a Hack Week project over two years ago, maybe three
years ago.
We had nobody on the Square side.
Square was doing its own thing.
We were all on the Cash App side.
But on nights and weekends, we hacked together a Hack Week
to that let a very small percentage of merchants
convert some daily sales into Bitcoin within Cash App.
(44:15):
And so nothing was really built natively within Square.
We did that for one hack week.
The next year we did another hack week.
We kind of like took it a step further.
But it really wasn't until January of this year
that we're like, hey guys, can we launch,
I mean, we wanted to launch it for real.
But in January is the first time like, all right,
(44:35):
You got people, you got a plan, go do this.
And so it started with, I think it was January,
I emailed Michael Markle from BTC Inc.
He runs all the payments for the Bitcoin conference.
And I was like, hey dude, what if we tried to do the payments at the Bitcoin conference?
And we'd do it as a big surprise, people would see it,
(44:58):
and we would announce it at the conference that this is coming.
At that time, and so we did that.
But the kind of lore that we didn't really talk about is the product that we just launched was not built at all in April.
It wasn't.
No, we had just kind of kicked off that work and we're figuring out, like, how can we even get this done in 2025 at all, period, even though we're going to announce it finished by the end of the year.
(45:30):
But what we launched and actually used at the Bitcoin conference, we launched it non-custodially.
So each square terminal had its own non-custodial wallet in there.
We had the LSP that's opening just-in-time channels to them and managing liquidity across this.
And it was like doing Bitcoin payments acceptance on expert mode before we'd even done like...
(45:56):
The hand-holding custodial model.
Yeah, novice mode.
and so that felt like um so crazy that we decided to do it but we had been we'd had a couple of
engineers building this on the side just for fun we're like um well not for fun I mean I think they
hoped to get it out at some point but we had to like tighten this thing up in about like a month
(46:18):
or two going into it I the night before I was kind of like I don't know I'm like 80% sure this
is going to work. This is going to go super well. The team worked so hard and we were so diligent,
like 15 of us behind the merch booth, which we were powering, just grinding as a team really
(46:38):
closely together to make sure that this was a success and then announce this vision of what
we're going to build. And then to have the team follow through in such a short timeline was
the best engineering effort that I've seen in my career. And so this week has been kind of a
culmination of that. I was pretty like emotional on Monday, sending a video to
(46:58):
the entire team because it's something we've been building towards for many
years and it all came together with the Bitcoin payments launch on Monday. I
think these, it's now Wednesday and we're launching a few of these features on
the Cash App side to really connect the ecosystem and make it even more
powerful. I think this overall narrative and ability to actually will this thing
into existence is a lot more real. After we announced it at the
(47:23):
Bitcoin conference. I remember thinking like, ah, this is so good. Jack's gonna be super happy to me.
And one of the press releases said like, coming out in 2026, like with all these kind of caveats.
And Jack was, he was like, no, it's like this needs to come out this year. And we need to figure out
how to do it. And I basically thought it was impossible. But November 10th was the date.
(47:49):
and we're really proud to hit that.
That was with like 100% of our focus
pointed on Square for the last nine months.
And then there's like,
and by the way,
we're doing this cash releases event too.
And so we've had to figure out
how to get these three other compelling products
to market this same week as well.
So I'm really looking forward
to the team being able to breathe a little bit,
(48:11):
but deadlines create urgency
and deadlines,
I think that's been a big change
that's been really positive for this year.
We're doing these twice-annual Square releases,
twice-annual Cash releases,
and I think it drives a lot of urgency
that's led to a lot of really amazing shipping recently.
I did not know that lore.
We set a Guinness Book of World Record.
(48:33):
Yeah, we did.
As the official witness of the record,
I can say we set the record.
Yep.
It's getting a little hairy there at the end,
but we got it over the mark at the end,
thanks to Rockstar Dev.
Yeah, it's like fast shipping.
I mean, I texted you, what was it, a month ago?
You guys announced it November 10th.
(48:54):
It'd be rolled out.
I was like, because during your presentation, you did say 2026 in the PR.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, you get it two months early.
And this is another thing, maybe not directly related to the Bitcoin products, maybe it
is, but we've been talking about this.
I mean, I think we've both gotten into vibe coding, AI.
And obviously with what Owen just announced downstairs,
(49:17):
looks like Cash App has an AI agent in the app, Moneybot.
Yeah.
And you were mentioning Goose earlier,
open source sort of a Gentic framework or MCP framework.
And how has that helped you guys build,
especially like in a large organization?
Jack loves the phrase, give time back.
(49:38):
Like that's ultimately like what we can do for our customers,
what we can do for our merchants is automate a lot of the mindless bullshit that comes with a
day-to-day job or running a business or running your financial life. And the more we can create
wonderful experiences that give time back to customers, the more time they have for real
creative endeavors or meaningful endeavors. And so that's kind of a core vision for what we want
(50:01):
to serve to our customers, but also how we operate internally. And so the number one company priority
for the last 12 months has been to automate block.
And we're increasingly moving our entire operating system
and the tools we use into Goose
and a few other sort of versions of that for internal tools.
(50:23):
But I think what's been really interesting to see
over the last year, especially,
is how it feels like a golden age for very high agency people.
to bust through walls and accomplish things
that they previously couldn't do,
or they had to wait for permission or alignment
(50:44):
from this team and that team, like big company stuff.
It really gives people the autonomy
to do things on their own.
And again, show, not tell.
I think, especially from the product perspective,
I think the new PRD, the product requirements doc,
It's like, this is not like a slide deck anymore, bro.
(51:07):
This is like, it's like, show me a working prototype.
Put your vision into pixels so that the rest of the team
can experience it.
I think what's worked really well for our team this year
is rather than getting alignment across the four big areas
of the company or waiting for some sort of review
(51:29):
to check this off and get the designs pixel perfect
or the comprehensive narrative on how this is going to fit into the other things we're
doing, it's like, no, go spike it.
Let's make this work in production.
Let's turn it on for what we call inner core, like the 10 most senior people at the company.
If they like it, it's like, yeah, then we'll have a mandate to see it all the way to production
(51:54):
and to the broader audiences versus, I've just found that's been a great way to interface
with engineers.
love spiking things. I personally love feeling it in production versus seeing it in designs
or in hypotheticals. I think to see your actual Bitcoin flowing in and out or to see your
(52:15):
hitting the traditional financial system in some other way based on all the sort of primitives
that we have within the company, to me that's like super fun and exciting. And I think we're
We're also seeing the blurring of different roles as a result.
Designers can now code and product people can now spin up Figma super easily and imagine
(52:39):
things.
I've found that our team in particular has been operating super, super well by being
super fungible, caring less about job title and which department are you in.
It's like, dude, we're all Bitcoins.
We're all on this mission.
these deadlines and it's like I'm pulling in my data scientist to do some product work that's
(53:00):
unaccounted for at the moment. I'm leaning in on my finance and strategy guy to like
do the groundwork to understand this new product that we want to do. So it's taken a village to
do all this stuff at once but I think my team's never been so tired but I think they've never
been so fulfilled as well and that's what it's all about. That's proof of work.
(53:20):
Yeah, I saw, I noticed you laughed a bit when Owen was introduced with his title because
you're just like, ah, titles.
I think there's a certain irreverence within Bitcoin and within Bitcoin period and throughout
the industry.
But I think especially within our team, within Block as well, it's kind of like, oh, those
(53:41):
guys never fully play by the rules or they just do what they got to do to get it done.
Yeah.
No, it's important.
And I think taking a step back and really coming back to Block's involvement with Bitcoin and making a bold stance.
We want to make Bitcoin everyday money.
(54:01):
There's a lot of people in the traditional financial system in Washington, D.C. that may see that as somewhat aggressive.
but it's incredibly refreshing to me because, as I said, radicalized by the great financial crisis,
WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden leaks, whatever it may be, made it clear to me there's a lot of corruption
(54:25):
and we need to fix the system.
And the fact that Block is willing to take a bold stance like, hey, we're going to lean into Bitcoin.
We want to make it everyday money.
it's something that the United States and corporate culture is desperately missing and has been missing for some time.
People plant the flag down and say, we're going to be bold.
(54:45):
We're going to go after this. We think there needs to be change.
We're going to be the change we want to see in the world.
And hopefully it inspires other people.
And you're saying other companies incorporating it, like SoFi just announced,
they'll have buy-sell capabilities.
They're also using Spark in the back end to do some international remittance.
I think it's certainly gotten to the point where in corporate boardrooms across the country,
(55:08):
particularly with FinTech and banking, the executives are bending the knee and saying,
okay, this isn't going away. We need to figure out a way to incorporate it into that sense.
Not that you need to give away any trade secrets to potential competitors, but what are some
of the learnings, the hard learnings that your teams have had building on Bitcoin that
(55:37):
you think a lot of others may run into?
Bitcoin is not easy to build on at all, period.
But I think if we weren't so principled, if we didn't think that the immaculate conception
and the lack of foundation and venture capitalists and coercion, that Bitcoin is just free of
(56:01):
all of that.
It's the most neutral.
Shipping a lot of these features that I think we'd want to get to customers would be a lot
easier if we just used X, Y, or Z chain.
Or if we just wanted to make a lot of money, we could turn on meme coins and all that, you know?
Yeah, meme coins there.
I'm trying to...
And so, like, it's painful sometimes to be principled.
(56:23):
It's been...
There's definitely been, like, times where people are, like, some people are pulling this way, some people are pulling that way.
And I think it requires a really strong, principled, visionary leader like Jack.
and I cannot tell you the amount of times that I've seen Jack had to have to like
(56:45):
do say the hard thing and take the principled stand even when it's like I'm like really you're
uh but he's just so the man um and I'm like eternally grateful for the way that he sets
the tone for the company that it makes it very easy to to try my best in every situation to try
to do the same. And so if there's one takeaway for people from this podcast is that Block Inc.
(57:11):
is here for the right reasons. We're always trying to do the right thing for Bitcoin and
we're taking that bigger picture vision into it. Well, it may seem counterintuitive or it may seem
like Block or any other company that's not incorporating anything outside of Bitcoin is
(57:31):
leaving money on the table, but I mean, at 1031, we are not venture capitalists.
We do venture investing and we invest in companies focused on Bitcoin. And our thesis,
our strategy is like, hey, this is a low time preference play by focusing and dedicating our
(57:52):
energy and time on Bitcoin. It may not be obvious to many people right now, but in the long run,
And that's going to be the right strategic move if you're able to focus, be hyper-focused and not get distracted by the bells, whistles and alarms of other distractions, as I would define them in the industry.
You're going to have a better product, a better business and be positioned better in the future.
(58:15):
You know, one thing I was reminded of by Pavlonex this week as we rolled out payments
was that in 2019 we were the at Spiral we were the first donation ever to the BTC Pay server team that like there obviously good history behind that than most of your listeners know but it like a free and open source version of BitPay
(58:43):
And we decided to sponsor them, even though they're like a direct competitor to like our payments business.
But because we believe in the long-term mission of Bitcoin, because we believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that by being close to this project, by this project existing, by being able to learn from this project, I think the thesis back then was we'll be in so much better of a position to learn alongside them and then act when the time is right.
(59:15):
And I think we're seeing that play out to some extent this week.
Yeah, I mean, another example from Spiral is LDK,
like the Lightning development kit built in Rust.
I think that's another incredible example of,
hey, we're going to fund these open source developers
to work on this development kit for this Lightning implementation,
(59:36):
and we're going to be able to leverage that.
Not only is anybody going to be able to leverage that,
but we'll also be able to leverage it to make our product better.
And so to your point, that's something that I think most people,
particularly in TradFi, FinTech,
when they're looking at Bitcoin,
don't understand your point of a rising tide,
lists all boats, the interoperability of Bitcoin,
(01:00:00):
one company's innovation, like Square,
you guys open sourced your cold storage,
your sort of security model.
Sub-zero.
Sub-zero.
In the early days, like anybody could use that,
including your competitors,
but at the end of the day,
if it's truly secure and robust,
That's better for Bitcoin at the end of the day because you don't have exchanges getting
(01:00:21):
hacked or whatever it may be.
Yep.
And we ultimately think we need to bring the entire company in this direction, this more
decentralized, this more open direction that's epitomized by Bitcoin.
But I think within the company, our Bitcoin team just last week, we actually open sourced
some of our withdrawal, like the code that processes our withdrawals from cold storage.
(01:00:45):
We open source that so that people could view that.
And I think, as far as I know, that's some of the first stuff we've done on Cash App,
but we want our customers to have even more visibility into our internal systems so that
they can know they can trust us.
As a company, we want to get to a place where our entire roadmap is open and viewable and
(01:01:07):
commentable, perhaps, to the broader world, the broader Bitcoin world.
And so I think building in public is something we've really embraced at Block Inc.
I think we can do an even better job.
It's something that in the last few weeks in particular, we've been trying to do across
the Bitcoin projects for cash, Square, BitKey, etc.
(01:01:31):
But my main focus now that we're obviously going to stay focused and deliver new things
and enhancements on the Square work as well, we're going to be really focused on powering
this flywheel of consumer awareness adoption and compensation and incentives But for me going into next year
(01:01:53):
revitalizing Cash App, Bitcoin in particular,
is gonna be my top priority.
I think our features have atrophied
over the last couple of years.
And we've, to be honest, we've, on the Cash App side,
after years of like tremendous, tremendous growth
where we're just holding on for dear life,
We've had to take things slower and patch some things up.
(01:02:18):
And I think it's reflected in some of the care that we've given to our Bitcoin customers.
And I deeply regret some of that.
And so looking to next year, it's going to be a total priority to bring back our best customers, to offer the best fees, the best experience, and bring in some new features that aren't available anywhere else.
(01:02:43):
So for anybody watching here that's been maybe used to use Cash App,
used to love Cash App and has maybe moved to somewhere else,
this is my promise to you right now that this is top of mind.
And bringing everybody back into the block ecosystem via Cash App
is a huge, huge priority for me.
That's my baby.
And it was really fun to see people engaging
(01:03:05):
and seeing a lot of excitement again from the map feature.
So I think there's a ton of opportunity there and a ton of opportunity to show the benefits of the entire ecosystem.
I also want to make sure I plug BitKey's security upgrade last week.
Oh, yeah. Chain code delegation.
(01:03:28):
Yep.
This is a big, I'll let you, I mean, your company released it.
I'm very excited about the product, so I'll let you explain it.
Well, without getting too deep in the details, basically, in most collaborative custody setups,
you're trusting the company you're contracting with to be able to view your transactions.
(01:03:49):
And with this, we introduce privacy from ourselves to give our customers more confidence
that they can use their Bitcoin without a private company and maybe as proxy,
like the government or anybody else as well.
It introduces real privacy without compromising the recovery guarantees
(01:04:14):
that are so important to the whole BitKey ethos and mission.
And there's a BIP that was put out, but we built this for ourselves.
And then again, we want to give it back out to the community
so that other setups can similarly benefit from it.
Yeah, that's massive.
I mean, I've talked to Michael Flaxman who's had this idea of sort of a blinded key path
(01:04:39):
in a collaborative custody set up for years.
And the fact that you guys launch it is massive.
So two or three set up, as long as I have two of the three keys and I can move the Bitcoin by myself.
If I'm using BitKey, Block cannot see that I'm receiving or sending Bitcoin.
Fallback option losing one of the keys need you guys to sign a transaction yes you know what included in that transaction but the ability to maintain and preserve privacy up until that fail moment is
(01:05:07):
a massive boon and thank you guys for that for sure and uh i know we're we're pressed for time
in this office but just what would you say not only to the bitcoiners out there but anybody
who's within the block ecosystem, whether that's a Cash App user, a Square seller,
(01:05:31):
those two particularly who are unfamiliar with Bitcoin,
what would your pitch to them be to get more involved in the products around Bitcoin that you guys are launching?
I mean, my favorite thing when talking to sellers,
even if they're like normies, they don't love Bitcoin,
But you're trying to talk to them about their current financial and treasury strategy, and you go like, wait, you're 100 percent dollars right now, like in this political climate.
(01:06:01):
And you're like kind of like things click for people so much more than they did many years ago.
People are feeling that instability in our economy, in our political system, in our institutions.
And that was always kind of like the Bitcoin thesis eight, 10, 12 years ago.
And for so many people, it's like, we're the world's greatest superpower.
(01:06:25):
These institutions are forever.
But I think a lot more people are feeling the fourth turning, like you said, or the changing of the guard or the whispers of a new era kind of appearing.
And I think starting small, it's like, OK, yeah, maybe one percent Bitcoin on my treasury.
(01:06:46):
Maybe it is good to hedge in this way.
Maybe I should be diversified.
Maybe I should be looking more deeply into this thing I keep hearing about.
And with the recent news clearly is becoming foundational infrastructure of the entire economy.
So I'd put it at that.
(01:07:06):
Yeah.
Maybe we won't wait eight years to record the next podcast.
What I'm really interested to see is the curiosity gap that's crossed just because you have this
Bitcoin brand touch in the Square Seller terminal, just as a seller. It's like, oh,
there's this Bitcoin thing here. Don't really care about it now. We come back to it. It's like,
oh, that Bitcoin thing's still there. How many nagging sort of seed reminders do you need before
(01:07:31):
they're like, all right, I'll turn that on just a little bit, just mess around with it.
There's so much opportunity to tap into from this foundation. And yeah, really,
really, really pleased and honored to get to share this moment with you, Marty, after all these years.
Because to me, this has been one of the best weeks of my life, finally achieving this thing that we set out to do
(01:07:56):
eight years ago of connecting the ecosystem with both the consumer and the merchant side.
The most underrated man in Bitcoin, ladies and gentlemen.
Miles, thank you for your time.
Thank you for all that you're doing.
it is an honor
and a privilege
to call you friends there
thank you so much Marty
peace and love freaks
thank you bro
love you too
Like I just said, eight years in the making.
It's a pleasure to be here, Marty, and yeah, it's a real long time coming.
Well, the pleasure is mine.
It's hard to treat you like you're a guest because you're such a good friend.
I've often referred to you, and I truly mean this, and I think it stays true to this day,
that you are the most underrated man in Bitcoin because of all the work
(00:20):
that you've been doing behind the scenes, first at Cash App, and now at Block more broadly.
And we're here today at Cash App Releases, the event announcing everything that the Cash App team is working on and releasing.
And I don't want any spoilers. This will come out after it.
But it's pretty sick what you guys are launching.
(00:40):
But not only at Cash App, I was at the Proto release party in Georgia in August.
That was incredible, I think.
The Bitcoin mining community and industry is very excited for you guys getting into the hardware business there.
And obviously, over the last week, Square point of sale terminals have released Bitcoin
functionalities to all Square sellers across the country.
(01:03):
So you guys have been shipping like crazy this year.
It's been a wild couple of weeks, couple of days, couple of weeks and even months.
But it's a core principle of Block Inc., the parent company of all these Bitcoin initiatives.
initiatives, but it's a core principle to show, not tell.
And so, yeah, it kind of blows my mind as well that this is kind of my first
(01:28):
real podcast that I've done, but I couldn't,
I wouldn't have done it with anybody else just because of our long history
together and just like our deep, deep friendship in,
since the early days of Bitcoin, trying to will this thing into existence.
Well, we were just talking about it.
I think we need to tell some more stories because I think many people got into Bitcoin, particularly post-2020, don't understand how hard it was being a Bitcoiner.
(01:56):
And from the 2013 to 2019 era, I would say, I think when Saylor came in, when stimulus checks started hitting post-COVID, people really began to realize the profundity of Bitcoin and why they should hold it as an asset and use it as money.
but before then it was like we were wandering in the desert trying to convince people that this is something worth paying attention to.
(02:21):
It was a very lonely endeavor, totally.
And Twitter was often the place, Twitter is where I met you.
And for many years it felt like kind of screaming out into the void.
None of my friends really cared to listen to me or were convinced enough.
(02:43):
I was the crazy Bitcoin friend for many, many years.
And I think there's something about Bitcoiners, especially early Bitcoiners,
where they have the tenacity within them to stick with their beliefs.
I feel like we've always known in the back of our heads, like, are we a little crazy?
But no, no, no, this really makes sense.
(03:05):
But it was a lonely process for a long time and I remember a lot of those early days on
Twitter feeling so relieved where there's people like you that understand the intellectual
journey that I've similarly been on, can understand the social isolation in many cases of not
being able to talk to your family or your friends, your college professors or people
(03:28):
that you think are smart that should have grokked this thing, but is a very solitary
mission.
But I think it's made us all really strong in the long run.
But yeah, I look back fondly of the days of Twitter of feeling it's like, oh, Marty
Bent, my first real Bitcoin friend, or Matt Odell, or Jack Mallers, Mr. Hoddle.
(03:51):
These are the first people that I relate to and feel like deep, deep connection intellectually,
but also sort of like spiritually as we hopped on this mission together.
Yeah, as you're describing that journey, it's very ironic, the correct word, but the
fact that we all met on Twitter, which was founded by Jack Dorsey, and then we're here
(04:15):
discussing what you guys are building a block, which was also founded by Jack Dorsey, is
incredibly poetic in a way because similarly, I was in this city. I lived in New York at
the time. I'd been into Bitcoin since college. I was in Chicago, but I came here and I was
just by myself on the internet, obsessed with looking for others. And obviously there was
(04:37):
public Twitter conversations, but sometimes the best conversations happen in DMs where
it's like, okay, what do we need to do? And I think you're an incredible example of someone
who saw the big vision and is using your knowledge and your expertise and your ability to build
things to join a large company like Block and basically imbue it with Bitcoin. And obviously
(05:01):
Jack is all on board and this is part of the DNA of the Block family of businesses. And I think
for people who haven't or aren't familiar with the sort of timeline of the integration of Bitcoin
across blocks companies, maybe it's a good time to just describe what the early days of Cash App
(05:23):
were like and why you guys decided to lean into Bitcoin. Sure. And I just want to start with
saying I don't think there's any company in the world doing more for Bitcoin than Block Inc. And
I appreciate you recognizing the way we've approached this.
And we've always tried to do it with a ton of principle and with the long run in mind.
(05:46):
For us, for me, for Jack, for everybody working on Bitcoin at the company,
the mission is so much more important than the money.
And we try to keep that core to what we're doing at all times.
And I mean, like, the gains when I say the money.
because we believe that Bitcoin's ultimate destiny is to become what Satoshi wanted,
(06:09):
peer-to-peer electronic cash.
And so one of our overarching company missions is to make Bitcoin everyday money.
And we've taken really intentional steps over the eight years that I've been at the company
to really push forward that evolution sequentially.
and it started in 2017 when I joined Cash App. Jack and Donji, our current CTO, were doing a
(06:41):
Hack Week project. Jack had asked him, can you integrate Bitcoin into Cash App? And Cash App
was really small. At this time, it was an email-to-email-based system that was just kind of
piloted internally for moving money around and was kind of at the very early stages.
(07:03):
Maybe a bit more, a bit beyond that, but that's how it started a couple of years before.
And I knew someone on the Cash App side and for years I'd wanted to work in Bitcoin.
And as I said to many of my friends from college, I was the crazy Bitcoin friend that they wanted
to shut up talking about it as the night got later on the weekends or at the bar.
(07:29):
Like eventually, I think you and many listeners can relate is that once you get the mind virus,
it's like everything ultimately comes back to Bitcoin and you just want and you want to share
it with everybody. And so I annoyed all of my friends for a long time, but at least that
reputation stuck in because when they wanted to production, I was bringing Bitcoin to cash out
(07:52):
to actual customers, there wasn't a ton of DNA on the team.
And so my friend introduced me to Jack, introduced me to the leadership team at Cash App.
And I joined in June and helped productionize that and bring it to market as the first public
company to support Bitcoin, period.
(08:15):
And why do you think it was important for a company like Cash App at the time to do that,
having been in Bitcoin for many years at that point?
Well, for me, it was just an amazing opportunity.
I'd wanted to work in Bitcoin for years,
but there weren't a lot of jobs available.
I had applied to Coinbase in 2013,
(08:37):
but it was mostly engineering,
and they were small and the future is super uncertain.
I just started another job as well.
And so it's hard to look back,
or for people that are newer, it's hard to understand
how uncertain things felt
way back in the day. And I think we owe a lot of that certainty and conviction
(09:00):
and stability now to a lot of the early moves
of companies like Cash App and the many, many other
contributors that helped get us to this point. But I mean, there were unbelievable
hurdles to jump through as the first public company.
not only regulatory wise, not just with the government, but even internally within Square.
(09:23):
It was just Square at the time. Square SQ was what had IPO'd, what everybody knew was the big brand.
And CashUp was the little brother within the company and was actually losing a ton of money.
It was actually potentially disastrous for the entire company if they didn't find a sustainable business model.
But right around that same time on Cash App, things started to click and I wouldn't credit it all to Bitcoin
(09:51):
or even most of it to Bitcoin. Bitcoin certainly provided a nice boost there and brought a lot of attention to it to the broader
sort of market and audience. But right around that time we clicked and found a sustainable growth model as well and
it really coincided that we took on like
(10:11):
exponential growth at that point.
So almost from the day I started,
it was kind of strap your seatbelt in and get going.
And ultimately, we're now at the point,
we scaled like crazy over the last six, eight,
I mean four, like throughout my entire time,
(10:33):
we've been scaling like crazy.
And I remember talking with Owen,
who's now head of business across all of Block, Inc.
But we looked at each other in 2017 or 2018,
and Apple had just come out with their wallet.
Venmo was so far ahead of us in terms of people
knowing where they were and actual user counts and volume
(10:53):
and all of them.
We looked at each other and it's like,
if we do this, if we actually catch these guys,
this is going to be crazy.
This is going to be some sort of movie, looking back on it.
And at this point, we're at 58 million monthly users.
We're one of the biggest debit card programs in all of the US.
And so it's been an incredible journey integrating Bitcoin into this ecosystem,
(11:21):
but also growing that broader ecosystem as well.
Yeah.
The stat I just saw downstairs, you've helped 24 million customers get on board to Bitcoin as well.
Some of it may be small, but some of it's certainly large.
Well, that's actually one of the things I'm most proud about in terms of
Who does Cash App serve and who are its customers?
(11:41):
It's not people on Wall Street for the most part.
It's not people that have a lot of financial privilege.
It's Americans from a hugely diverse set of backgrounds, whether geographically, socioeconomically.
And for me, that's what Bitcoin has always been about, getting better money into the hands of the people,
(12:06):
not the corporations, not the government or the hedge funds.
It's like Bitcoin is for the people.
And that's kind of always been core to my ethos in this space.
Thinking back to 2017 when you joined and launched Bitcoin and Cash App,
at the time Bitcoin was eight years old, which is crazy to think.
It's like incredibly young, nascent distributed protocol to really lean into.
(12:30):
So the fact that you guys had that forward-looking view
and took the risk lean in at that time.
Again, I will say like as a Bitcoiner,
when you guys started leaning into it,
I was like, this is exactly what we need.
Some legitimacy from a brand that is perceived
by most people in the United States
to be completely legitimate.
Where at the time, every exchange
(12:52):
was sort of a startup that nobody could really trust.
But with that being said,
launched eight years into the protocol.
It's been eight years since almost exactly to the date.
And Bitcoin's evolved a lot. The protocols evolved. The layers on top of the protocol have evolved, which has enabled you guys to enable a lot more features, particularly around Bitcoin, lightning payments, send, receive being one of the biggest that I can think of.
(13:22):
But we were talking about this downstairs.
This year, across the block, sub-companies or a family of companies,
it's been incredibly impressive to watch the speed at which you've been shipping,
not only the Bitcoin-related products just in general,
but as it pertains to the Bitcoin-related products.
(13:42):
Is that a function of just organizational efficiency that been gained over the years or do you guys think the timing is right for these products to be released and there an opportunity to take advantage of So the point I left a little unfinished before when talking about cash being a small
part of Square at that time was that we faced a lot of internal opposition, even.
(14:05):
Bitcoin's boiling in the ocean.
Bitcoin is X.
Bitcoin is Y. And getting alignment at a big company can be difficult.
But over those eight years, we've done a lot of internal education.
We've brought in new people that are really excited about Bitcoin.
And so I think there's a lot more unity and commitment to the cause.
And I think that starts with Jack at the top.
(14:26):
And I think we recently had a, we flew all 10,000 people from the company out for a company birthday party, essentially.
It was our 16th birthday.
It's a square number.
everybody was in Oakland and we did like essentially like a very high
production two-day conference inside the Oakland arena and the talk of the town
(14:50):
leaving that was Bitcoin about how Bitcoin showed up the biggest at that
conference and how so many people left with the impression like oh my god I
I finally understand Bitcoin now.
Because I think one of the most impactful panels that we had there was Jack interviewed a number of human rights activists from around the world that are using Bitcoin in amazing circumstances.
(15:19):
Circumstances of extreme difficulty and resilience.
And I think that really resonated with so much of the company that maybe is further away from the work and helped us understand as Americans or people in first world countries just how much financial privilege we have and that Bitcoin is for everyone.
And then there were other sessions on Bitcoin as well.
(15:41):
But just a little sidetrack that like it's been a long process, just like orange pilling the world or your family is a process.
I think the same process has happened internally.
So I think that's really good.
And that's really important.
About a year ago, we also shifted to a functional model
within the company that has allowed us to be a lot more
(16:06):
intentional and deliberate with our Bitcoin products, what
we're shipping, and what is the overall vision?
How do these different things come together?
And like you mentioned, there's been so many announcements
launches in the last few months in particular.
(16:27):
And I think, I mean, this week was so exciting for me because the Square Payments thing was
something of really great importance for our company, but for Bitcoin as a whole, I think.
Even when I started in 2017, people were asking me, like, when Square?
(16:48):
When Lightning?
So like finally be able to do it is a huge, huge milestone.
And I think a number of the features that you saw previewed today at cash releases, I think, pair into that really well for what the evolution of Bitcoin can continue to look like and what it can mean for a major financial firm to be increasingly leaning into these primitives and the capabilities behind it.
(17:19):
them.
Yeah, and since we're releasing this on Monday and we're not going to break any embargo,
we can talk about it.
I mean, the pay a Bitcoin invoice, we hit record, there's some lore behind that particular application.
Yeah, so this feature is something that was the core primitive for how Strike was
(17:47):
actually started.
brilliant model because it allows lightning invoices to be paid with dollars, which avoids
any sort of taxable event for the sender, which has been one of the limiting factors
that people talk about when why Bitcoin payments won't exist or won't take off, especially
(18:09):
before some de minimis exception comes out.
But the deep, deep lore is I pulled out an email from, as I mentioned earlier, Jack and
I go way back.
We're great friends.
And that's the beauty of Bitcoin is he has an app that is essentially, I would call it
a Bitcoin native version of Cash App.
(18:31):
And they've been doing tremendously well and successful and it's been awesome to see their
success because as one part of the network grows, the other benefits as well.
and that's something we share in conviction
is like how the open network wins.
And it's really unique about our industry
where we can cheer for our competition.
Oh, I had this experience downstairs
(18:52):
where I paid an invoice from Square POS terminal,
and I pulled up Primal app, which is using Strike
on the back end paid, and boom, Strike to Cash App
interoperable.
Yep.
And so just the more people using Bitcoin,
the stronger the overall network is,
and the more successful my company is going to be,
and the more successful every Bitcoin company is going to be.
(19:13):
And so, yeah, side quest there.
But the funny part is, is like the foundational idea for Strike
was actually emailed to me from Jack on November 1st, 2019,
because we were talking about doing it for a Cash App
Internal Hack Week.
(19:33):
And so it was like, what a, that brought like a swell to my heart
looking at that, like, oh man, simple days back then.
and made me super proud to see the growth of the industry, the growth of my friends in the industry,
and how far things have come from that day since.
Yeah, and it's been very obvious the last six months, particularly, that Bitcoin is everyday money,
(19:54):
is a core focus.
It seems like over the last few years, many in the Bitcoin space,
if you're not paying attention to what's happening on the ground in terms of payments,
innovation, whether it's cash humans,
ARC protocol,
the maturation of lightning, many people
become convinced that Bitcoin
is simply digital gold that you're supposed to
(20:15):
buy, hold, never sell, never
spend, try to
speculative attack
the credit system to get more Bitcoin.
But like you
mentioned earlier, the goal
at Block is to make sure that Bitcoin is
everyday money. And what would you
say to people that say it's not
wise to go after that medium of exchange use case right now?
(20:36):
Yeah, so we have a three-part sort of approach for how we've served the Bitcoin community
and ecosystem to get to that end goal that I'll circle back to at some point.
But we believe with conviction that in order for Bitcoin to maintain the attributes that
(20:59):
make it so unique, namely censorship resistance, it requires velocity.
Storing it in ETFs or on corporate treasuries and just having it sit idle there, it loses
the very thing that attracted people like you and me to it originally.
(21:22):
And so we believe that in order for Bitcoin to truly succeed, for it to become the native
currency of the internet, we want it to be used every day.
And we think that we are uniquely positioned to help push this.
And so just like I mentioned earlier that when we launched Cash App, on Cash App a lot of
(21:44):
people were like, you guys are a little crazy and you're a little early.
And not many people know, even before that, in 2013, on that bull run, Square actually
debuted on-chain acceptance through a third party before rolling it back after not a lot of people
accepted. I remember walking to the coffee shop around the corner from me in San Francisco
(22:08):
in Nob Hill and it was clunky and the barista didn't know how to use it. And you'd see this
at all the kind of attempts at introducing payments to the mainstream to date is that there was always
was a sidecar or the training was difficult or the Bitcoin person isn't in right now.
(22:28):
You can't pay in Bitcoin.
And so I think the seamlessness of what we've launched on Square recently is going to be
a huge part of why the odds of this clicking and growing and progressing to where we hope
(22:49):
it to get to be is different this time.
And you asked me earlier, like, is what's changed or like why is now the right time?
Like today is the right time to do it.
Tomorrow would be the right time to do it.
If not us, then who?
You know, it feels like it's reaching a point where we need to.
(23:13):
It's almost like which way?
Western man.
Yeah.
And we feel strongly that that this is the direction Bitcoin should go and people should
vote with their feet, vote with their sats.
And to see the response from the community
the last few days on Twitter has been truly unbelievable.
I just, I've always loved, occasionally they make me crazy,
(23:38):
but seeing like the community engagement
and how inspired people have been to deputize themselves,
to go sign up their local Square merchants,
to tell them to turn on Bitcoin
because they want to pay them in Bitcoin,
because they want this virtuous cycle to flow.
It's like there's so many beautiful people in this space
and so many people that are so mission driven
(23:58):
that it's an honor to be a part of it so frequently.
And there's massive benefits to the sellers
for incorporating it, both if you do cash
and you put a portion of that in the Bitcoin right away,
but on the payment side, from a fee perspective,
it makes a lot of sense to enable Bitcoin payments.
The merchants understand it right away,
(24:18):
even normie merchants.
And I think what's really unique about what we've launched,
Jack had a great tweet, but our merchants can now
accept payments in four different ways.
Bitcoin to Bitcoin, so customers sending Bitcoin,
merchant receiving Bitcoin, holding it as Bitcoin.
You can go BTC to fiat, so that means automatically converting
(24:40):
it into dollars for these normie sellers
that I was talking about.
They want to save 3%, but they don't want to hold Bitcoin.
They'll do that any day.
You know, it's like, I don't even have to think
about the Bitcoin, yeah, sure, sign me up, turn it on.
If people want to pay me that way, great.
The flip side of what we've also built
is what we called our conversions product.
And so that is where daily card sales come through.
(25:03):
People are tapping as they buy their coffees.
You said a percentage that you want converted
and DCA'd into Bitcoin on a daily basis.
And I actually think that's the product
that's going to take off more immediately than payment.
That's kind of the equivalent of what I like,
(25:23):
the parallel to Cash App that really we saw by sell
and like being up increasing accessibility
as the first step of people's journey into Bitcoin.
I think that's where people can start really small,
get a little bit of exposure, see how it affects their cash
flows, and then observe it over time.
That yes, this thing's volatile, but it
(25:45):
trends towards, trends only in one direction on a long enough time frame.
And so I really love that daily conversions feature.
And then you can still take fiat to fiat payments as well.
But we built a fully native Bitcoin banking stack for the 4 million merchants across the U.S.
(26:05):
And it's really a first in the world integration that it's not just bolted on.
it's truly deeply integrated into the tools that you already know and love within Square.
So that means your loyalty still works and your gift cards still work.
There's just being part of the ecosystem.
(26:25):
I think Bitcoin is an incredible new part of the Square experience.
And we're seeing great excitement out the gates.
And I think we're still, just like Cashflow, I think we're early on the payment stuff.
We very well may be early, but we have a history of taking principled early bets.
(26:50):
And from this foundation, I think the genie's out of the bottle.
And it'll just grow and grow as more merchants come to appreciate that there's no fees for accepting Bitcoin.
There's no chargebacks.
And you don't have to wait at all to get access to your funds.
and in an increasingly digital world, those are three very important attributes for people trying to make a,
(27:10):
for hardworking Americans trying to make a living running their business.
Yeah, well, and to that last point, hardworking Americans trying to make a living.
I know this is something that we've talked about over the eight years,
we've known each other. I think we both very much view Bitcoin as a tool to get us closer to a future
(27:31):
which more humans are free.
That is your Twitter bio I deeply care about human freedom I think that where we really connect We got into Bitcoin with anti industrial complex
sort of ethos, and we're both children of the great financial crisis.
I'll just speak for myself when I saw that and everything that happened
(27:54):
in the early 2010s as it relates to WikiLeaks, Snowden,
it became clear to me there needs to be an alternative.
It feels like Bitcoin is that, and that's why I've dedicated my life to it.
But as time's progressed and you look at the political discourse in the country right now and how polarized everything is,
and in my view, everybody's wiping up branches when they're missing the core of the problem, which is that the money's broken.
(28:19):
And I've written about this many times the last few weeks as you guys have continued to roll out these products.
This is massive to me because I think Bitcoin is that sly roundabout way to fix a lot of the social issues which are seeped in economic stress in the United States without having to ask politicians to fix it for us.
(28:41):
And so by enabling 4 million square merchants to get onboarded to Bitcoin, whether that's receiving payments, letting their users or their customers paying Bitcoin or simply sweeping some of their fiat revenues into Bitcoin to sit on their treasury.
To me, that is more impactful than trying to fix the economic issues that exist in America today by going to D.C. and asking them to fix it for us.
(29:08):
I think that's extremely well said.
And I resonate a lot with your journey, as we've talked about over the many years.
But, I mean, I'm old school.
Like, I came to Bitcoin.
I found Bitcoin in the zero-hedge comment section in 2011, which, I mean, if there was ever a spot that Marty Jones would feel right at home at, it's those zero-hedge comment sections.
(29:37):
But I say I'm old school because for me it was always about constraining the power of
the state to act in an unethical manner.
I was very red-pillowed about the foreign adventurism of the US military and the pain
we were causing in the Middle East.
(29:58):
Back then there wasn't, it's pretty mainstream to be like, oh yeah, those wars were a disaster
these days.
in 2011 or 15, 10, back in 2011 or those days, it was not like you're still kind of an outsider
if you're doing that. It's been positive to see the way things have changed, but there was a lot
(30:22):
tighter grip on cultural consensus back then, I think. And I think that that same thing is true of
money where people are asking what is money and like it's kind of culturally understood like oh
yeah they just print as much of it as up and there's no constraint on it yada yada yada but
you ask people but back then have you ever thought about what money is and be like shut up don't care
(30:48):
you know like things are stable but I don't it's not really of concern to me so I think that is a
positive that people do feel more conscious about these macro things.
I think there's a lot further to go in a number of these areas.
(31:11):
But as you mentioned, to me, Bitcoin has always been,
I'm blanking on it.
Bitcoin is civil disobedience, is a tweet out I put out a number of years ago.
And I believe that it is opting out.
It is putting your weight behind building a better, fairer system.
(31:37):
And I think that's been core to my journey.
And so just to tie it back to what you said about at Block,
We want to make Bitcoin everyday money.
And to get there, we believe we have
to make it more accessible.
We need to make it more secure.
And then we need to make it more usable.
And going back to your timeline question,
(32:00):
Cash App was all about making it accessible,
making it instantly available for millions of people
across the US.
We're doing the same thing now with Square, where people
can get their first touches on it, experience it,
and increase usability and accessibility.
So the second sort of like bucket of projects that we look at is making it more secure.
Like if Bitcoin is going to be around for generations and the future of the entire global financial system,
(32:25):
we need it to be secure. We need it to be decentralized.
And so that inspired our investments in both BitKey and Proto.
With BitKey, we're making it more secure to hold your own keys, to have it be recoverable and introduce self-custody
to a whole new audience.
This is self-custody that my grandma can use.
(32:48):
And with Proto, we felt it was really important
to offer an American company alternative
to kind of like the duopoly that comes from China
and has a mixed bag of reviews from the many people
like Deep in the Mining, you know all about it.
So many Deep in the Mining industry.
(33:08):
I can speak for a lot of us where it's like, thank God,
there's a competitor to Bitmain and MicroBT.
Just because Bitmain specifically is not as customer forward as somebody like Proto.
We really hope to change that.
And then in making Bitcoin more usable,
(33:29):
I think it's about showing these opportunities of how and why you should be using Bitcoin every day
and ultimately progress it on its path to everyday money.
And so we talked about some of the merchant benefits,
the no fees, no chargebacks, instant availability.
But then what is that, how do we make it even simpler
(33:51):
from the cash-up side of things?
And so we talked a little bit about a product that,
internally we called it Dollars on Lightning for a long time,
basically the strike model.
Preserve your stack while still letting the merchant receive Bitcoin
and take advantage of Bitcoin, the network, and then perhaps the asset as well, or perhaps fiat.
(34:15):
But I think the next sort of step from this product that I think is really, really exciting is,
so everybody in Strike is like Bitcoin native. Everybody within Cash App using Lightning
with the Bitcoin as the foundation
is
Bitcoin native or like they understand
(34:37):
Bitcoin to some extent. But in
any given month, it's like single digit
monthly actives
of Bitcoin customers. But we
have this top of funnel of
58 million monthly actives.
And so that's 50
plus million people
active on the app each month
that we can introduce the
Lightning Network to without even
(34:59):
knowing what
Bitcoin is or what Lightning is. By letting them use that US dollar balance that they all have,
I think it's a step towards onboarding the next tens of millions of people onto Bitcoin without
even requiring them to know what it is. And so I think that's a big part in sort of connecting
(35:21):
the ecosystem. And I think it's all going to be driven by economic incentives. I think when
merchants are saving money on processing fees,
they can pass that back to customers
who are increasingly conscious of the fading value
of their dollar, that their salary's not keeping up
with inflation, that their taxes keep rising.
That it's hard to be an American.
(35:44):
It's hard to be, I have a lot of empathy
for people in America that are struggling.
I think far too often we don't call those people out
or they're ignored.
But I also want to recognize that I'm super passionate
about people in the developing world who have it much, much
harder as well, which is why I paused.
(36:06):
But at least on the catch up side of things,
things are harder.
And so I think meaningful, like getting 1% back
in Bitcoin from the merchant because you scan this QR code
instead of swiping your card, I think that's meaningful.
And that's something that we want to lean a lot into.
The other feature that we launched this week at Cash Releases
(36:27):
is what we're calling Bitcoin Maps.
And so a lot of what we love to do things
that are good for our company, but good for the community
as well.
And we love open source is core to the block, Inc. DNA.
Going back to our little timeline before, in 2019,
We started a wing of the company called Spiral that's led by Steve Lee.
(36:51):
We have 10 full-time people where all they do is work on Bitcoin.
And Jack can't tell Steve or that team what to work on.
They're just completely independent, just funded by Block Inc.
We've probably given 100 grants to people on every continent around the world.
And so they're doing really important work growing the open source ecosystem.
And that's just open source Bitcoin.
(37:12):
Doc has a head of open source within the company.
Our AI initiative, Goose, is all about open source as well.
Open source is really core to what we're doing.
We do a lot at the company.
Obviously, I'm focusing only on Bitcoin.
But there's a lot of cool stuff going on across the company that I encourage everybody to look
(37:33):
into.
Back to the map.
We used an open source framework, btcmap.org.
This was just like a volunteer based thing where people are tagging stores that accept
Bitcoin and it works across the entire globe.
And it's actually really fun to zoom out, zoom in and kind of like see where's all the
action.
(37:55):
But with the Square integration, we made it so every merchant that turns on payments is
given a pop up, a quick yes or no.
Do you want to be added to the Bitcoin map to get free advertising to this rabid bunch
of people that are part of this movement that want to kick off the flywheel of Bitcoin payment
(38:16):
adoption.
And so it's really cool to have both sides of the network where these merchants are popping
up on the map and then our engaged consumers on this side can use the map as a hub to go
find these consumer incentives to go chase these deals and support this protocol.
Support this protocol like Johnny Appleseed with Bitcoin at these new places, but also
(38:39):
we can point the normies in here too if we're getting meaningful rewards back in some of these
places from the savings of processing. And so we're calling those quests. We're going to be able to
send people on quests to go find merchants that are doing a promotion or want to accept Bitcoin
(39:00):
and get things back within Cash App. And the second part of what we're launching in the next
version of the map is what we're calling Quest.
And this is what I mentioned earlier.
And I put out a video tweet for the first time in my life.
I'll be like, hey, guys.
But it was actually super fun and had
amazing reaction of engaged Bitcoiners around the country,
(39:22):
going to their local coffee shop that uses Square,
convincing them to turn on Bitcoin payments,
and then doing a payment.
And I said, hey, I'll pay out a bounty to anybody
that will do this.
We'll automate this process.
Yesterday was just a scrappy version,
but I was blown away with the response
and definitely something we're gonna productionize
and automate to happen automatically.
(39:43):
But I just, I'm pretty caught up in the moment
just wanted to keep all the excitement
and energy going yesterday.
So I think that was a big success.
I saw our friend Paul Keating
was really putting up numbers yesterday.
I think he put up six merchants on the island of Kauai.
You know, can't be that many merchants.
We'll get them all pretty soon.
Well, to any merchants who are new to this podcast and listening in because Miles is on,
(40:07):
just go look at Steak and Shake.
They came out with some financials.
They saw a 15% uplift in revenue when they announced Bitcoin.
Store over store sales or whatever.
I forget what that metric is called.
It was material gross in there.
And the revenue, like the Bitcoiners are sort of a rabid consumer base that is looking to
Johnny Appleseed Bitcoin adoption.
(40:27):
So they will treat you well.
And I think this gets to another thing, like moving forward, not only for Block, but for Bitcoin.
Like, what do you think is most critical as we move further into sort of this inflection point of human history, fourth earning, whatever you want to call it?
(40:49):
So I think we have a lot of pieces in place for Bitcoin.
And you know what, through all the cycles, I'm constantly shocked by the surprises that
come through and like the brief heart attacks or not so brief heart attacks as things inevitably
go wrong.
(41:09):
But I'm always shocked by the resilience and the people.
And I think we have a lot of the right things in place.
And ultimately, we're doing everything we can as a company to make sure Bitcoin is resilient,
decentralized secure accessible and used by people all around But it takes more than us and it takes the community But I think what we seen in the past is even when we early we see others follow
(41:39):
And so I hope that, as I mentioned, open network, like the more people, the more point of sales
companies accepting Bitcoin, the better. Please go copy the products and turn on, get even more
merchants converting their daily sales each and every day. To me, these blue collar and
high-end places as well using Square, to me, these are the real Bitcoin treasury companies,
(42:05):
the ones using proof of work every day to put the Bitcoin on their balance sheet.
And that's sort of like a speculative attack that aligns much more with my ethos and what
gets me excited.
I saw Parker in Sahil down in Austin spending Bitcoin at what used to be my favorite local
grocer, which is Local Pastures.
(42:26):
Well, the best.
You have Sam Moffitt, who's been on the show before.
He runs Shirtail Creek Farms.
They have the best eggs I've ever had in my life.
Incredible ground beef.
They were an early beta tester that we got on board.
And Sam came on the show, and I think after he was on the show, Parker and I were like,
hey, this guy wants to get in.
But at the time, this was a year, year and a half ago,
(42:47):
he was curious but didn't have the tools to do it.
And it seems like you guys have made that really easy.
And I remember what I wanted to ask earlier
when we were on this thread of seller adoption.
I remember a couple weeks ago when I sent a tweet out
when you guys announced something related to the Square POS.
Somebody responded.
They've been in a beta test for two years.
(43:07):
And their comment was,
I'm extremely excited for all other Square sellers
to get access to this
because it's been incredibly beneficial for me and my business.
Is there any sort of data or KPIs from that beta test that you can point to?
So I think actually the most interesting way to answer this
is to go through the timeline of how this all came to be.
(43:30):
As I mentioned, there's a lot more internal alignment within the last year.
I have a lot more mandate to make things happen across Cash, Square, and Bickey.
And there's just been a lot of things shifting
that have put us in a good position
to execute really quickly and ship things.
But the test that we're talking about,
(43:54):
we did a Hack Week project over two years ago, maybe three
years ago.
We had nobody on the Square side.
Square was doing its own thing.
We were all on the Cash App side.
But on nights and weekends, we hacked together a Hack Week
to that let a very small percentage of merchants
convert some daily sales into Bitcoin within Cash App.
(44:15):
And so nothing was really built natively within Square.
We did that for one hack week.
The next year we did another hack week.
We kind of like took it a step further.
But it really wasn't until January of this year
that we're like, hey guys, can we launch,
I mean, we wanted to launch it for real.
But in January is the first time like, all right,
(44:35):
You got people, you got a plan, go do this.
And so it started with, I think it was January,
I emailed Michael Markle from BTC Inc.
He runs all the payments for the Bitcoin conference.
And I was like, hey dude, what if we tried to do the payments at the Bitcoin conference?
And we'd do it as a big surprise, people would see it,
(44:58):
and we would announce it at the conference that this is coming.
At that time, and so we did that.
But the kind of lore that we didn't really talk about is the product that we just launched was not built at all in April.
It wasn't.
No, we had just kind of kicked off that work and we're figuring out, like, how can we even get this done in 2025 at all, period, even though we're going to announce it finished by the end of the year.
(45:30):
But what we launched and actually used at the Bitcoin conference, we launched it non-custodially.
So each square terminal had its own non-custodial wallet in there.
We had the LSP that's opening just-in-time channels to them and managing liquidity across this.
And it was like doing Bitcoin payments acceptance on expert mode before we'd even done like...
(45:56):
The hand-holding custodial model.
Yeah, novice mode.
and so that felt like um so crazy that we decided to do it but we had been we'd had a couple of
engineers building this on the side just for fun we're like um well not for fun I mean I think they
hoped to get it out at some point but we had to like tighten this thing up in about like a month
(46:18):
or two going into it I the night before I was kind of like I don't know I'm like 80% sure this
is going to work. This is going to go super well. The team worked so hard and we were so diligent,
like 15 of us behind the merch booth, which we were powering, just grinding as a team really
(46:38):
closely together to make sure that this was a success and then announce this vision of what
we're going to build. And then to have the team follow through in such a short timeline was
the best engineering effort that I've seen in my career. And so this week has been kind of a
culmination of that. I was pretty like emotional on Monday, sending a video to
(46:58):
the entire team because it's something we've been building towards for many
years and it all came together with the Bitcoin payments launch on Monday. I
think these, it's now Wednesday and we're launching a few of these features on
the Cash App side to really connect the ecosystem and make it even more
powerful. I think this overall narrative and ability to actually will this thing
into existence is a lot more real. After we announced it at the
(47:23):
Bitcoin conference. I remember thinking like, ah, this is so good. Jack's gonna be super happy to me.
And one of the press releases said like, coming out in 2026, like with all these kind of caveats.
And Jack was, he was like, no, it's like this needs to come out this year. And we need to figure out
how to do it. And I basically thought it was impossible. But November 10th was the date.
(47:49):
and we're really proud to hit that.
That was with like 100% of our focus
pointed on Square for the last nine months.
And then there's like,
and by the way,
we're doing this cash releases event too.
And so we've had to figure out
how to get these three other compelling products
to market this same week as well.
So I'm really looking forward
to the team being able to breathe a little bit,
(48:11):
but deadlines create urgency
and deadlines,
I think that's been a big change
that's been really positive for this year.
We're doing these twice-annual Square releases,
twice-annual Cash releases,
and I think it drives a lot of urgency
that's led to a lot of really amazing shipping recently.
I did not know that lore.
We set a Guinness Book of World Record.
(48:33):
Yeah, we did.
As the official witness of the record,
I can say we set the record.
Yep.
It's getting a little hairy there at the end,
but we got it over the mark at the end,
thanks to Rockstar Dev.
Yeah, it's like fast shipping.
I mean, I texted you, what was it, a month ago?
You guys announced it November 10th.
(48:54):
It'd be rolled out.
I was like, because during your presentation, you did say 2026 in the PR.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, you get it two months early.
And this is another thing, maybe not directly related to the Bitcoin products, maybe it
is, but we've been talking about this.
I mean, I think we've both gotten into vibe coding, AI.
And obviously with what Owen just announced downstairs,
(49:17):
looks like Cash App has an AI agent in the app, Moneybot.
Yeah.
And you were mentioning Goose earlier,
open source sort of a Gentic framework or MCP framework.
And how has that helped you guys build,
especially like in a large organization?
Jack loves the phrase, give time back.
(49:38):
Like that's ultimately like what we can do for our customers,
what we can do for our merchants is automate a lot of the mindless bullshit that comes with a
day-to-day job or running a business or running your financial life. And the more we can create
wonderful experiences that give time back to customers, the more time they have for real
creative endeavors or meaningful endeavors. And so that's kind of a core vision for what we want
(50:01):
to serve to our customers, but also how we operate internally. And so the number one company priority
for the last 12 months has been to automate block.
And we're increasingly moving our entire operating system
and the tools we use into Goose
and a few other sort of versions of that for internal tools.
(50:23):
But I think what's been really interesting to see
over the last year, especially,
is how it feels like a golden age for very high agency people.
to bust through walls and accomplish things
that they previously couldn't do,
or they had to wait for permission or alignment
(50:44):
from this team and that team, like big company stuff.
It really gives people the autonomy
to do things on their own.
And again, show, not tell.
I think, especially from the product perspective,
I think the new PRD, the product requirements doc,
It's like, this is not like a slide deck anymore, bro.
(51:07):
This is like, it's like, show me a working prototype.
Put your vision into pixels so that the rest of the team
can experience it.
I think what's worked really well for our team this year
is rather than getting alignment across the four big areas
of the company or waiting for some sort of review
(51:29):
to check this off and get the designs pixel perfect
or the comprehensive narrative on how this is going to fit into the other things we're
doing, it's like, no, go spike it.
Let's make this work in production.
Let's turn it on for what we call inner core, like the 10 most senior people at the company.
If they like it, it's like, yeah, then we'll have a mandate to see it all the way to production
(51:54):
and to the broader audiences versus, I've just found that's been a great way to interface
with engineers.
love spiking things. I personally love feeling it in production versus seeing it in designs
or in hypotheticals. I think to see your actual Bitcoin flowing in and out or to see your
(52:15):
hitting the traditional financial system in some other way based on all the sort of primitives
that we have within the company, to me that's like super fun and exciting. And I think we're
We're also seeing the blurring of different roles as a result.
Designers can now code and product people can now spin up Figma super easily and imagine
(52:39):
things.
I've found that our team in particular has been operating super, super well by being
super fungible, caring less about job title and which department are you in.
It's like, dude, we're all Bitcoins.
We're all on this mission.
these deadlines and it's like I'm pulling in my data scientist to do some product work that's
(53:00):
unaccounted for at the moment. I'm leaning in on my finance and strategy guy to like
do the groundwork to understand this new product that we want to do. So it's taken a village to
do all this stuff at once but I think my team's never been so tired but I think they've never
been so fulfilled as well and that's what it's all about. That's proof of work.
(53:20):
Yeah, I saw, I noticed you laughed a bit when Owen was introduced with his title because
you're just like, ah, titles.
I think there's a certain irreverence within Bitcoin and within Bitcoin period and throughout
the industry.
But I think especially within our team, within Block as well, it's kind of like, oh, those
(53:41):
guys never fully play by the rules or they just do what they got to do to get it done.
Yeah.
No, it's important.
And I think taking a step back and really coming back to Block's involvement with Bitcoin and making a bold stance.
We want to make Bitcoin everyday money.
(54:01):
There's a lot of people in the traditional financial system in Washington, D.C. that may see that as somewhat aggressive.
but it's incredibly refreshing to me because, as I said, radicalized by the great financial crisis,
WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden leaks, whatever it may be, made it clear to me there's a lot of corruption
(54:25):
and we need to fix the system.
And the fact that Block is willing to take a bold stance like, hey, we're going to lean into Bitcoin.
We want to make it everyday money.
it's something that the United States and corporate culture is desperately missing and has been missing for some time.
People plant the flag down and say, we're going to be bold.
(54:45):
We're going to go after this. We think there needs to be change.
We're going to be the change we want to see in the world.
And hopefully it inspires other people.
And you're saying other companies incorporating it, like SoFi just announced,
they'll have buy-sell capabilities.
They're also using Spark in the back end to do some international remittance.
I think it's certainly gotten to the point where in corporate boardrooms across the country,
(55:08):
particularly with FinTech and banking, the executives are bending the knee and saying,
okay, this isn't going away. We need to figure out a way to incorporate it into that sense.
Not that you need to give away any trade secrets to potential competitors, but what are some
of the learnings, the hard learnings that your teams have had building on Bitcoin that
(55:37):
you think a lot of others may run into?
Bitcoin is not easy to build on at all, period.
But I think if we weren't so principled, if we didn't think that the immaculate conception
and the lack of foundation and venture capitalists and coercion, that Bitcoin is just free of
(56:01):
all of that.
It's the most neutral.
Shipping a lot of these features that I think we'd want to get to customers would be a lot
easier if we just used X, Y, or Z chain.
Or if we just wanted to make a lot of money, we could turn on meme coins and all that, you know?
Yeah, meme coins there.
I'm trying to...
And so, like, it's painful sometimes to be principled.
(56:23):
It's been...
There's definitely been, like, times where people are, like, some people are pulling this way, some people are pulling that way.
And I think it requires a really strong, principled, visionary leader like Jack.
and I cannot tell you the amount of times that I've seen Jack had to have to like
(56:45):
do say the hard thing and take the principled stand even when it's like I'm like really you're
uh but he's just so the man um and I'm like eternally grateful for the way that he sets
the tone for the company that it makes it very easy to to try my best in every situation to try
to do the same. And so if there's one takeaway for people from this podcast is that Block Inc.
(57:11):
is here for the right reasons. We're always trying to do the right thing for Bitcoin and
we're taking that bigger picture vision into it. Well, it may seem counterintuitive or it may seem
like Block or any other company that's not incorporating anything outside of Bitcoin is
(57:31):
leaving money on the table, but I mean, at 1031, we are not venture capitalists.
We do venture investing and we invest in companies focused on Bitcoin. And our thesis,
our strategy is like, hey, this is a low time preference play by focusing and dedicating our
(57:52):
energy and time on Bitcoin. It may not be obvious to many people right now, but in the long run,
And that's going to be the right strategic move if you're able to focus, be hyper-focused and not get distracted by the bells, whistles and alarms of other distractions, as I would define them in the industry.
You're going to have a better product, a better business and be positioned better in the future.
(58:15):
You know, one thing I was reminded of by Pavlonex this week as we rolled out payments
was that in 2019 we were the at Spiral we were the first donation ever to the BTC Pay server team that like there obviously good history behind that than most of your listeners know but it like a free and open source version of BitPay
(58:43):
And we decided to sponsor them, even though they're like a direct competitor to like our payments business.
But because we believe in the long-term mission of Bitcoin, because we believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that by being close to this project, by this project existing, by being able to learn from this project, I think the thesis back then was we'll be in so much better of a position to learn alongside them and then act when the time is right.
(59:15):
And I think we're seeing that play out to some extent this week.
Yeah, I mean, another example from Spiral is LDK,
like the Lightning development kit built in Rust.
I think that's another incredible example of,
hey, we're going to fund these open source developers
to work on this development kit for this Lightning implementation,
(59:36):
and we're going to be able to leverage that.
Not only is anybody going to be able to leverage that,
but we'll also be able to leverage it to make our product better.
And so to your point, that's something that I think most people,
particularly in TradFi, FinTech,
when they're looking at Bitcoin,
don't understand your point of a rising tide,
lists all boats, the interoperability of Bitcoin,
(01:00:00):
one company's innovation, like Square,
you guys open sourced your cold storage,
your sort of security model.
Sub-zero.
Sub-zero.
In the early days, like anybody could use that,
including your competitors,
but at the end of the day,
if it's truly secure and robust,
That's better for Bitcoin at the end of the day because you don't have exchanges getting
(01:00:21):
hacked or whatever it may be.
Yep.
And we ultimately think we need to bring the entire company in this direction, this more
decentralized, this more open direction that's epitomized by Bitcoin.
But I think within the company, our Bitcoin team just last week, we actually open sourced
some of our withdrawal, like the code that processes our withdrawals from cold storage.
(01:00:45):
We open source that so that people could view that.
And I think, as far as I know, that's some of the first stuff we've done on Cash App,
but we want our customers to have even more visibility into our internal systems so that
they can know they can trust us.
As a company, we want to get to a place where our entire roadmap is open and viewable and
(01:01:07):
commentable, perhaps, to the broader world, the broader Bitcoin world.
And so I think building in public is something we've really embraced at Block Inc.
I think we can do an even better job.
It's something that in the last few weeks in particular, we've been trying to do across
the Bitcoin projects for cash, Square, BitKey, etc.
(01:01:31):
But my main focus now that we're obviously going to stay focused and deliver new things
and enhancements on the Square work as well, we're going to be really focused on powering
this flywheel of consumer awareness adoption and compensation and incentives But for me going into next year
(01:01:53):
revitalizing Cash App, Bitcoin in particular,
is gonna be my top priority.
I think our features have atrophied
over the last couple of years.
And we've, to be honest, we've, on the Cash App side,
after years of like tremendous, tremendous growth
where we're just holding on for dear life,
We've had to take things slower and patch some things up.
(01:02:18):
And I think it's reflected in some of the care that we've given to our Bitcoin customers.
And I deeply regret some of that.
And so looking to next year, it's going to be a total priority to bring back our best customers, to offer the best fees, the best experience, and bring in some new features that aren't available anywhere else.
(01:02:43):
So for anybody watching here that's been maybe used to use Cash App,
used to love Cash App and has maybe moved to somewhere else,
this is my promise to you right now that this is top of mind.
And bringing everybody back into the block ecosystem via Cash App
is a huge, huge priority for me.
That's my baby.
And it was really fun to see people engaging
(01:03:05):
and seeing a lot of excitement again from the map feature.
So I think there's a ton of opportunity there and a ton of opportunity to show the benefits of the entire ecosystem.
I also want to make sure I plug BitKey's security upgrade last week.
Oh, yeah. Chain code delegation.
(01:03:28):
Yep.
This is a big, I'll let you, I mean, your company released it.
I'm very excited about the product, so I'll let you explain it.
Well, without getting too deep in the details, basically, in most collaborative custody setups,
you're trusting the company you're contracting with to be able to view your transactions.
(01:03:49):
And with this, we introduce privacy from ourselves to give our customers more confidence
that they can use their Bitcoin without a private company and maybe as proxy,
like the government or anybody else as well.
It introduces real privacy without compromising the recovery guarantees
(01:04:14):
that are so important to the whole BitKey ethos and mission.
And there's a BIP that was put out, but we built this for ourselves.
And then again, we want to give it back out to the community
so that other setups can similarly benefit from it.
Yeah, that's massive.
I mean, I've talked to Michael Flaxman who's had this idea of sort of a blinded key path
(01:04:39):
in a collaborative custody set up for years.
And the fact that you guys launch it is massive.
So two or three set up, as long as I have two of the three keys and I can move the Bitcoin by myself.
If I'm using BitKey, Block cannot see that I'm receiving or sending Bitcoin.
Fallback option losing one of the keys need you guys to sign a transaction yes you know what included in that transaction but the ability to maintain and preserve privacy up until that fail moment is
(01:05:07):
a massive boon and thank you guys for that for sure and uh i know we're we're pressed for time
in this office but just what would you say not only to the bitcoiners out there but anybody
who's within the block ecosystem, whether that's a Cash App user, a Square seller,
(01:05:31):
those two particularly who are unfamiliar with Bitcoin,
what would your pitch to them be to get more involved in the products around Bitcoin that you guys are launching?
I mean, my favorite thing when talking to sellers,
even if they're like normies, they don't love Bitcoin,
But you're trying to talk to them about their current financial and treasury strategy, and you go like, wait, you're 100 percent dollars right now, like in this political climate.
(01:06:01):
And you're like kind of like things click for people so much more than they did many years ago.
People are feeling that instability in our economy, in our political system, in our institutions.
And that was always kind of like the Bitcoin thesis eight, 10, 12 years ago.
And for so many people, it's like, we're the world's greatest superpower.
(01:06:25):
These institutions are forever.
But I think a lot more people are feeling the fourth turning, like you said, or the changing of the guard or the whispers of a new era kind of appearing.
And I think starting small, it's like, OK, yeah, maybe one percent Bitcoin on my treasury.
(01:06:46):
Maybe it is good to hedge in this way.
Maybe I should be diversified.
Maybe I should be looking more deeply into this thing I keep hearing about.
And with the recent news clearly is becoming foundational infrastructure of the entire economy.
So I'd put it at that.
(01:07:06):
Yeah.
Maybe we won't wait eight years to record the next podcast.
What I'm really interested to see is the curiosity gap that's crossed just because you have this
Bitcoin brand touch in the Square Seller terminal, just as a seller. It's like, oh,
there's this Bitcoin thing here. Don't really care about it now. We come back to it. It's like,
oh, that Bitcoin thing's still there. How many nagging sort of seed reminders do you need before
(01:07:31):
they're like, all right, I'll turn that on just a little bit, just mess around with it.
There's so much opportunity to tap into from this foundation. And yeah, really,
really, really pleased and honored to get to share this moment with you, Marty, after all these years.
Because to me, this has been one of the best weeks of my life, finally achieving this thing that we set out to do
(01:07:56):
eight years ago of connecting the ecosystem with both the consumer and the merchant side.
The most underrated man in Bitcoin, ladies and gentlemen.
Miles, thank you for your time.
Thank you for all that you're doing.
it is an honor
and a privilege
to call you friends there
thank you so much Marty
peace and love freaks
thank you bro
love you too
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