In a tweet on Thursday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that his fintech company Square plans on creating a new business that will be focused on Bitcoin. The company’s new business, according to Dorsey, “will focus on building an open developer platform with the sole goal of making it easy to create non-custodial, permission-less, and decentralized financial services.”
Dorsey tweeted that the new business name is TBD without revealing what the acronym “TBD” stands for. At the moment, it is uncertain what it means exactly. No elaboration was made as to whether the name of the new business was to be determined, or if it was just going to go by “TBD”.
Square’s new Bitcoin-focused business will be headed by Mike Brock, who heads the Strategic Development Group at Square’s payments service cash app. Mike Brock tweeted several names of the founding team of Square’s new business, and expressed his excitement to return to the world of open-source – the new business will be completely open-source. This is similar to Square’s pre-announced hardware wallet for Bitcoin.
Square previously announced that it was creating a non-custodial hardware wallet for Bitcoin which can be stored either offline or online at cryptocurrency exchanges. According to the company, the purpose of the hardware wallet is not to compete with other hardware wallets, but to take the hardware wallet and service to the next level; to reachabout100moremillionpeople, and make Bitcoin custody more mainstream. People do not have sole control with a custodial wallet. But with a non-custodial wallet, people get sole control of their private keys, which in turn control their cryptocurrency and prove the funds are theirs. It also protects users from online theft.
According to Dorsey, if Square eventually decides on building the hardware wallet, it will be done entirely in the “open”, from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community.
Last month, cryptocurrency trading volume slumped by 40%. Bitcoin fell more than 6% and the Chinese government’s crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading continues to affect Bitcoin’s value. Despite these setbacks, Bitcoin remains the top digital currency with the highest market capitalization.
