The Crypto Messaging Dream is Alive

Discover Financial Services was bounced out of the S&P500 last year with the arrival of Coinbase, the biggest crypto exchange in the US and the world's biggest custodian of bitcoin. Another crypto newcomer is Block, formerly Square, which started life as an iPhone dongle back in 2011. 

Square rebranded to Block in 2021 to reflect its pivot towards all things blockchain-y. "Founded in 2009 as Square, Block is best known for its Cash App mobile payments offering and the Square POS unit, which recently added real-time bitcoin transactions," notes Finextra. 

If you think that Square founder Jack Dorsey, who originally founded Twitter, was on his way to making Twitter a crypto platform, you might be right, but Elon Musk took over that task and is still apparently intent on making X a superapp or a version of Telegram with its own native token. 

"In a statement on the S&P move, Square says: 'It's a milestone that reflects the strength of our business and the work of thousands of people building tools to increase access to the economy, across our brands including Square, Cash App, Afterpay, Tidal, Proto, and Bitkey'." 

If what we hear is true, not many people are using bitcoin for spending, considering that it might radically rise or fall in price. But that didn't stop Block from gaining 7 percent in value in early trading, an early beneficiary of the optimism in crypto as it emerges from 'Cryptoweek', where legislators looked to bring crypto into mainstream finance.