Jack Dorsey Says Square Is Looking to Build a Bitcoin Mining System

Square Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said on Friday the fintech firm is looking to build a Bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals as well as businesses.

This would add to Square's existing Bitcoin-focused projects including a business to build an open developer platform, as well as a hardware wallet for the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin price in India as of October 16 at 12:22pm IST was Rs. 48.25 lakhs.

"If we do this, we'd follow our hardware wallet model: build in the open in collaboration with the community," Dorsey said in a tweet. This will be completely open source like Square's previously announced hardware wallet for Bitcoin, which can be stored offline or online at cryptocurrency exchanges.

A team led by Square's hardware lead, Jesse Dorogusker, will investigate requisites for Square to take on the project to build a Bitcoin mining system.

In his Twitter thread, Dorsey also said that silicon design or chip design is too concentrated into a few companies, leading to supply constraints.

Shares of Square were up about 1 percent in extended trading.

On Friday, Bitcoin topped $60,000 (roughly Rs. 44.97 lakhs) for the first time in six months, since China's crackdown on Bitcoin trading and mining, as hopes grew that US regulators would allow a futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF), a move likely to open the path to wider investment in digital assets.

© Thomson Reuters 2021