Square's Bitcoin sales double in Q2 2019

• Bitcoin sales of $125 million have resulted in $2 million gross profit for Square.
• Bitcoin sales are not as profitable from Square, but they increase user engagement.

Popular payments company, Square, reported its second-quarter earnings revealing $125 million in Bitcoin sales via its Cash App. This nearly doubled its record first quarter. The report said: 

"During the quarter, bitcoin revenue benefited from increased volume as a result of the increase in the price of bitcoin, and generated $2 million of gross profit."

The company said that Bitcoin represented around half of the total revenue on its Cash App, at $260 million during the second quarter of 2019. However, Bitcoin costs are listed at $122.9 million in the unaudited report, resulting in the afore-mentioned $2 million profit.

With $65.5 million in revenue and $832,000 in profit, the first quarter of 2019 was thought to be Square's best quarter. However, clocking $125 million in sales during the second quarter reflects significant growth and a new record for the firm. For comparison, Square reported $166 million in Bitcoin sales in all of 2018.

With a net loss of $6.7 million in $1.17 billion of total revenue for the quarter, Bitcoin remains away from the center of Square's overall strategy. According to the report, transaction-based revenue in the second quarter topped $775 million. Earlier, Square specified the role of Square Crypto, a project created within the firm to make open-source contributions to the bitcoin protocol and ecosystem.

Chris Brendler, a senior research director at market intelligence firm CB Insights, believes that adding Bitcoin is helping Square drive more usage from its users. He said: 

"They don’t really make a lot of money on it, but it is driving engagement."

 

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