Square Says It Has 'No Plans' to Buy More Bitcoin, According to Report
John Castro - Square CFO Amrita Ahuja said the company had "no plans" to buy more bitcoin.
- The company holds 8,027 bitcoins, worth over $400 million at current prices.
- She said Square's position was that bitcoin "is an area that needs innovation" in clean energy.
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Square's chief financial officer, Amrita Ahuja, told Financial News on Friday that her company didn't have any plans to buy more bitcoin.
"We don't have any plans at this point to make further purchases," Ahuja said.
The CFO added that there were "lots of other opportunities" for Square to "learn with bitcoin" and that the company was "always evaluating" possibilities in the space.
"I think we'd be customer-led," Ahuja said. "As we see the evolution of the bitcoin product or crypto products in general, I think we'll make further assessments at that point."
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A representative for Square told Insider that the company hadn't changed its stance on bitcoin and would "continue to assess our investment in bitcoin on an ongoing basis."
Square bought 4,709 bitcoins for $50 million in 2020 and then an additional 3,318 bitcoins for $170 million in February. In the second purchase, the company paid more than $51,200 per bitcoin, according to calculations from Reuters.
Square now holds 8,027 bitcoins, worth over $400 million at current prices.
The digital-payments firm has long been a proponent of cryptocurrencies and of bitcoin in particular.
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Square's Cash App platform was one of the first major exchanges to allow customers to buy the digital asset.
Square generated $3.51 billion in revenue and $75 million in gross profit from its bitcoin offerings in the first quarter of 2021, the firm said in a shareholder letter.
The company in April released a study it produced with Cathie Wood's Ark Invest titled "Bitcoin is key to an abundant, clean energy future."
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Wood said in a tweet describing the companies' findings that evidence in the study disproved the myth that bitcoin-mining processes were damaging to the environment.
"Instead, as crypto mining, energy storage, and AI technologies converge, the adoption of renewable energy is likely to accelerate!" Wood said.
Square's CEO, Jack Dorsey, has also been consistently behind bitcoin. In a conference call after Square bought $170 million worth of bitcoin earlier this year, Dorsey said, "The internet needs a native currency, and we believe bitcoin is it."
Ahuja even told Fortune in a late-March interview that "there's absolutely a case for every balance sheet to have bitcoin on it."
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But the new comments from Ahuja and Square show a different tone toward bitcoin.
Ahuja said in her Friday interview with Financial News that Square had "no plans at this point to re-evaluate where we are from a treasury standpoint" with regard to cryptocurrencies.
The CFO added that Square's position with respect to bitcoin "has always been that this is an area that needs innovation in terms of renewables and clean energy."
"There's a broader supply chain question around how renewables and clean energy become a greater part of the blockchain in general, and a greater part of the overall mining and transaction network," she said, adding, "It's the overall fixed footprint of the network that we need to address."
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The change in tone came after Tesla halted bitcoin purchases of its vehicles, citing the environmental impact of the cryptocurrency.
