The payment processing company Square is considering developing a bitcoin mining system based on “custom silicon and open source” for people and businesses all over the world. That’s according to published reports and a series of tweets from Twitter/Square CEO Jack Dorsey over the weekend.
“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.
Square is considering building a Bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide. If we do this, we’d follow our hardware wallet model: build in the open in collaboration with the community. First some thoughts and questions.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) October 15, 2021
Dorsey added that the silicon design is the province of only a handful of companies, which leads to constraints on supply. He stressed the urgency of centralized mining for a more durable bitcoin network, and added that mining needs to be more efficient for cleaner energy use. Dorsey also argued that bitcoin mining should be simplified, allowing more people to partake.
Read more: Square Eyes Open Developer Platform for Crypto Products
“There isn’t enough incentive today for individuals to overcome the complexity of running a miner for themselves,” Dorsey wrote on Twitter. “What are the biggest barriers for people running miners?”
Also see: Square Building Hardware Wallet for Cryptocurrencies
These statements from Dorsey, a longtime bitcoin advocate, follow his announcements this summer that Square was developing a bitcoin-focused platform for decentralized finance, to make it easier to “create non-custodial, permissionless and decentralized financial services.”
That announcement came just after Square revealed it was working on a hardware wallet for cryptocurrency and had put together a team of engineers to start the process. Dorsey had first floated the idea in June of this year.
Learn more: Bitcoin Futures ETF Trading Could Get SEC Green Light
The news arrives just as the Securities and Exchange Commission is apparently poised to hand a significant victory to the crypto community in allowing the first American bitcoin futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to begin trading.
As PYMNTS reported on Sunday (Oct. 17), the SEC isn’t likely to halt the ETFs proposed by ProShares and Invesco. Speculation about this move helped bitcoin trade above $60,000 last week, its highest level since April.
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