Squareâs Cash App deals in bitcoin operationally but a $50 million investment from the publicly traded firmâs cash reserves has grown significantly since being announced last fall.
Squareâs 4,709 bitcoins were worth $50 million when the company announced the purchase in October 2020. Now that BTC is worth a whopping $253 million.Â
Along with MicroStrategy, Square was an early entrant in the corporate bitcoin sweepstakes. Such treasury management plays inspired Elon Muskâs Tesla to invest $1.5 billion in bitcoin earlier this month.Â
Still, ahead of Squareâs latest earnings report on Tuesday, analysts arenât as enthused about the fraction of Squareâs treasury (roughly 1% of the firmâs total assets when announced) that is crypto-denominated.
âThere will be a bigger focus on the bitcoin purchases of their customer base and Cash App,â said Seaport Global analyst Chris Brendler. âIt should be a big number in the fourth quarter.â
Analyst consensus estimates that Square will record $1.5 billion in bitcoin revenue, but those estimates could be off because of analysts who donât pay attention to the bitcoin markets, Brendler said. His own estimate is $2.2 billion, a $600 million increase from Squareâs third quarter bitcoin transaction revenue.
In the third quarter of 2020, Square reported $1.63 billion in bitcoin revenue, which resulted in $32 million of gross profit from the bitcoin product in that quarter.