Block Partners With Coinbase and Cashapp to Launch Beta BTC Wallet

• The announcement Thursday caused a nearly 4% increase in SQ.
• The mobile app will eventually combine third-party exchange partners.

On Thursday, Jack Dorsey’s payments firm Block announced the launch of an open beta test for its Bitkey self-custodial Bitcoin wallet. To securely transfer Bitcoin from Coinbase or CashApp to the wallet “without the friction of standard ‘copy and paste,’” the beta already contains unique interfaces with both services.

Block, which trades on the NYSE under the symbol SQ, has previously only made its beta accessible to its own workers. The new open beta program will provide the general public with a no-cost opportunity to test the company’s hardware and software. The announcement Thursday caused a nearly 4% increase in SQ.

Simplified BTC Transactions

The hardware wallet’s beta version will support fundamental operations like sending and receiving BTC and will provide both PIN code and fingerprint identification methods for unlocking the device. The mobile app will eventually combine third-party exchange partners like CashApp and Coinbase to let users purchase Bitcoin straight via the app.

Later this year, consumers of both Coinbase One and Bitkey will be able to take advantage of a “joint offer” thanks to Coinbase’s cooperation with Bitkey, as announced by Coinbase. They hope that by including Bitcoin, it will be simpler to transfer to and from local fiat currencies.

For quite some time, CashApp has served as a marketplace for Bitcoin purchases; now, the app also supports payment in Bitcoin and the lightning network. While Bitkey’s wallet does handle multi-signature transactions, this feature is limited to the main blockchain.

Companies led by Jack Dorsey are still hard at work on Bitcoin infrastructure including mining software and international gateways. This Monday, the Bitcoin network’s devs received $5 million from the billionaire’s relief foundation Start Small. Unlike Ethereum, which Dorsey views as an unregistered security, Bitcoin has a lot more of his backing than other cryptocurrency networks.