Square CEO Jack Dorsey said late on Friday the company might jump into the bitcoin mining business.
Dorsey tweeted that the company is considering a “bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide.” The price of bitcoin rose above $62,000 following Dorsey’s string of tweets, as the world’s most popular cryptocurrency pushes toward its all-time high.
Dorsey’s goal would be to make crypto mining — the process of creating new bitcoins by solving increasingly complex computational problems — more accessible, much as Square’s original vision was to make it easier for small businesses and independent proprietors to take credit card payments. He wrote that bitcoin mining should be “as easy as plugging a rig into a power source.” Today, the bitcoin mining industry is dominated by large-scale players who can afford to buy tens of thousands of ASICs, the type of specialty gear used to mint new coin.
The team run by Jesse Dorogusker, who is the hardware lead at Square, will begin studying the technolody necessary to take this project on, according to Dorsey.
“We will incubate the bitcoin mining system project inside Square’s hardware team, starting with architecture, design, and prototyping of more efficient silicon, hashing algorithms, and power architectures,” Dorogusker wrote in a tweet.
Dorogusker said that Afshin Rezayee, the leader and architect of Square’s silicon team in Toronto since 2015, will lead the project, given silicon is at the core of this new initiative.
“Building a strong core in silicon is just a start. Delivering the value we imagine requires the full stack – silicon, hardware, software, manufacturing, and innovative distribution that can help us support the whole world,” continued Dorogusker.
Dorogusker is also leading Square’s project to build a crypto wallet.
Bitcoin mining should be easy, says Dorsey
Dorsey, who is also the CEO of Twitter, also outlined his thinking on why Square is looking…
