Square’s stock price rose more than 2% following the news.
One month ago, Jack Dorsey predicted that the Internet “will have a native currency” during a keynote session at Consensus, the world’s largest cryptocurrency conference, held in New York City. “I hope it will be Bitcoin. I’m a huge fan,” he said.
Now Dorsey has won approval to advance his dream in New York, a state known for imposing heavy regulatory requirements on cryptocurrency businesses. On Monday, the Twitter cofounder and CEO’s going fintech concern, Square, received approval from the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) for a BitLicense, which clears the company to offer customers who reside in the state the ability to buy and sell Bitcoin through its Cash app.
This is the seventh such BitLicense awarded by NYDFS, and the second in less than a week. That’s in addition to two cryptocurrency-related charters NYDFS has issued since adopting the new regulatory framework for virtual currency businesses three years ago.
Square is best known for selling point-of-sale hardware devices to merchants. The San Francisco-based company added the Bitcoin feature on Cash, its payments app, in January, following a brief pilot program in the fall. (New York residents were barred from participating until Monday.)
Sometime within the past year, Square applied for the BitLicense, as Fortune first reported. The company brought in $34 million in revenue on the Bitcoin feature in the first quarter of 2018, according to the company’s most recent earnings report, a sum that translated, after costs, to a meager $223,000 in profit.
Source/More: Cryptocurrency: Jack Dorsey’s Square Wins NY BitLicense | Fortune
