BREAKING: Square rebrands to Block as focus shifts to blockchain

BREAKING: Square rebrands to Block as focus shifts to blockchain

Digital payments company Square announced that it has changed its company name to Block, seemingly in a shift towards blockchain technology.

In a Wednesday tweet, Square said the rebrand will bring the payments firm together with Cash App, the decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) exchange project tbDEX, and music and video streaming platform Tidal. An accompanying news release said that Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused branch of the payment firm, will also be changing its name to Spiral and joining the Block family.

Our top trading bots

“Block references the neighborhood blocks where we find our sellers, a blockchain, block parties full of music, obstacles to overcome, a section of code, building blocks, and of course, tungsten cubes,” said Square. “We’ve been working to make this change for over a year, and it only represents a change of our official corporate name; not our purpose, our vision, our structure or how we operate.”

The rebranding comes a mere two days after Square — now Block — CEO Jack Dorsey resigned his position at Twitter, citing the need to give his replacement, chief technology officer and board member Parag Agrawal, the space to work without his influence at the social media giant. At the time, many speculated that Dorsey would get deeper into crypto and blockchain through Square’s operations, in much the same way Facebook turned its focus away from social media with a rebranding to Meta.

“Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same,” said Dorsey on the name change. “No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.”

Related: Jack Dorsey outlines Square’s tentative plans for Bitcoin hardware wallet

Square said the legal name change would be effective “on or about” Dec. 10. According to the company, there will be no organizational changes to Block, Cash App, Tidal, Spiral or tbDEX.

This story is developing and will be updated.

Read on relating to Cointelegraph
Real estate leads securitized blockchain assets in 2022 — Report
Real estate is an asset class that is ripe for integration with blockchain technology. Security tokens cover many categories but are dominated by real estate....
MetisDAO TVL surges by 99,800% as the layer-2 race heats up
Attracting liquidity has become a de facto arms race in the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape. Projects constantly battle to attract investors’...
Crypto poses imminent threat to financial stability: Bank of England Deputy Governor
According to Sir Jon Cunliffe, the deputy governor for Financial Stability at the Bank of England (BoE), crypto may pose an imminent threat to the traditional...
MetaMask integrates with Bitfinex Pay amid growing demand for crypto payments
Crypto payment gateway Bitfinex Pay has integrated with MetaMask, the popular browser and wallet extension powered by ConsenSys, potentially opening the...
Cosmoverse Conference 2021 kicks off in Lisbon
The team behind interoperable blockchain network Cosmos (ATOM) recently hosted the Cosmoverse Conference live from Lisbon, Portugal.Kicking off the two-day...
Celebrities are embracing NFTs in a big way
The nonfungible token (NFT) market is growing. According to a new report by analytics platform DappRadar, NFT trade volume soared past $10 billion during...
‘We are at war’ with crypto, says Turkish President Erdoğan
Turkey is eager to become a blockchain hub as a country with one leg in Europe and another in Asia. However, the same passion doesn’t apply to cryptocurrencies,...
Former pro sailer brokers tax-haven passports for wealthy crypto clients
A Russian expatriate and former professional sailboat racer, Katie Ananina, Plan B Passport — a firm that brokers citizenship through investment schemes...
Chia network not so green? CPU mining reportedly destroys SSD in weeks
Chia Network, which emerged onto the cryptocurrency scene with the promise of cleaning up the environmental mess left by Bitcoin (BTC) miners, may not be...
DMCC strikes deal to build blockchain-based precious metals refinery in Dubai
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre — a free trade zone established by the Dubai Government — has signed a sale and purchase agreement with REIT Development...
NYSE celebrates historic 'first trades' with NFT series
The New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE, has jumped on the NFT bandwagon by minting nonfungible tokens celebrating the first trade made in the shares of prominent...
Mati Greenspan warns SEC's latest action could threaten future of all cryptocurrencies
Quantum Economics founder Mati Greenspan has warned the SEC’s latest action against decentralized content platform LBRY could threaten the future of all...
Focus on NFTs and interoperability pushes Icon (ICX), Ark and Axie Infinity higher
High levels of excitement continue to surround all things nonfungible token (NFT)-related as nonfungible art, collectibles and new business models built...
Digital ruble is ‘highest form of money’, Russian Bitcoin critic says
Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, believes that the country’s not-yet-launched digital currency is the...
Developers Of Firelotto Create A Transparent Public Blockchain Lottery
Each of us played a lottery at least once in our life. The rules and organization are different for everyone, but most share a common feature: control...