Square Sets the Table for Crypto-Fueled Caffeine Fixes

Girl/boy math is telling yourself that an $8 matcha latte costs just seven hundred-thousandths of a bitcoin. Soon, that conversion will matter because any shop that uses Square will be able to accept bitcoin payments. 

Square parent Block said it’ll start supporting bitcoin later this year, reaching all 4 million of its sellers by next year. CEO Jack Dorsey said merchants can keep the bitcoin they’re paid in or have it automatically converted to fiat currencies (like the dollar, peso, or pound). Previously, sellers could only do the opposite, meaning convert their fiat sales into bitcoin. 

Call It Bizcoin

Square rival Stripe started supporting stablecoin transactions last year, acquiring stablecoin platform Bridge in February for $1.1 billion to strengthen its infrastructure. It’s actually a circle-back for Stripe, which was the first payments company to process bitcoin in 2014 but discontinued its crypto offering four years later after running into low demand and high fees.

PayPal, meanwhile, has been letting shoppers check out with crypto since 2021. PayPal launched its own stablecoin in 2023 and began allowing US businesses to buy and sell bitcoin on its platform last year. 

As payment platforms give millions of small businesses more exposure to bitcoin, big businesses are also piling into the digital asset — whose price popped 50% from last month to an all-time high of more than $111,000 last week:

• According to BitcoinTreasuries.net’s tracker, 114 publicly-listed companies now hold bitcoin, up from 89 at the beginning of last month. Together, they’ve amassed about $87 billion worth.
• GameStop disclosed yesterday that it bought $500 million worth of bitcoin to stash in its treasury. Similarly, POTUS Trump’s media company said Tuesday it plans to raise $2.5 billion to build its own treasury of the in-demand digital asset.

Hype Machine: Block announced its bitcoin expansion at Bitcoin 2025, an annual crypto conference where, last year, Trump said he’d make the US the “crypto capital of the planet.” Hopes are high that crypto will enter the mainstream under Trump as regulators push for legal frameworks that could help it gain wider adoption (a stablecoin bill is imminent). At this year’s Bitcoin 2025, VP JD Vance doubled down on the administration’s support, saying the crypto industry needs regulatory clarity ASAP.