On October 15, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Block Inc. (known as Square, Inc. until December 1, 2021), said in a tweet that the company was going to develop an open-source system that would allow individual investors and companies across the world to mine Bitcoin and altcoins using their own equipment.
On January 13, Dorsey announced that the company has started developing a system with an open-source code. Block will strive to broaden its perspectives and expand into new areas.
Bitcoin mining for everyone
According to Thomas Templeton, Block’s general manager for hardware, coins will be mined “out in the open & alongside the community.” The developers will try to come up with solutions to such issues as electricity consumption, access to and reliability of mining hardware, and decreasing the level of noise.
The ultimate goal is to allow users to mine cryptocurrencies at home.
“We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining. We’re interested because mining goes far beyond creating new Bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless,” Thomas Templeton wrote in his recent tweet.
He also wrote that the company might develop its own ASICs (specialized rigs designed to mine crypto), and it has started assessing IP blocks, mining firmware based on open-source codes, and other capabilities of system software.
Block has already started assembling a team of programmers and engineers.
About Block Inc
Block Inc. was formerly known as Square Inc. and changed its name in December 2021. The company has its head office in the USA and operates in the areas of payment products and financial services. Its first platform was launched in 2010. Block Inc. provides a product that allows businesses to accept credit card payments by using a card reader that connects to a mobile phone or a tablet. In the first decade of its operation, Square significantly expanded its portfolio of services for small and medium businesses.
Jack Dorsey, the company’s founder, is known to be a proponent of crypto, particularly Bitcoin. He has said that Bitcoin reminds him of the early Internet where the community was driving the network’s development. Therefore, the new developments align perfectly with his beliefs. Dorsey is confident that Bitcoin should become the Internet’s main means of payment. In 2020–2021, he invested some of the company’s assets into cryptocurrency, and Block currently holds 8,027 BTC.
In 2006, Dorsey co-founded Twitter and became its CEO — the position which he left only in November 2021. Between 2015 and 2018, he chose to forgo any compensation for his work and after that received only the base salary of $1.40
In 2021, Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT for almost $3 million and donated the profits to charity.
