Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced he was resigning as CEO of Twitter yesterday, namely because activist investors have had it out for the tech CEO since last year.
Today, Square is getting an all-new parent company: Block. Block will act as the parent that owns Square, Cash App, TIDAL, Spiral (a spinoff of Square Crypto), and TBD54566975 (a bitcoin-focused decentralized exchange.) As the name implies, each company or project is a building block part of a whole.
For anyone surprised by this move, Square’s Block pivot shares some trends among Big Tech lore. Walk with us:
1) Remember Google and Facebook? Or should we say… Alphabet and Meta? Big Tech companies love to rebrand. Dorsey reorganizing Square is tantamount to taking a pen and writing the next chapter for his payments giant. Obviously, he’s going to take Square in a new direction — one that’s all about crypto and blockchain.
2) Remember when Apple CEO Steve Jobs got thrown out of his own company in 1985? This is basically that, but even more alpha. 😅 Jobs went on to found NeXT Computer out of spite. Sure, Jack probably wants to see Twitter succeed. But by all metrics, Twitter is a losing media investment whereas Square is an industry-leading payments solution.
0% of this is surprising to us. Dorsey was quoted back in June saying that Bitcoin was the most “important thing” in his lifetime to “work on.” He added that if he was not at Square or Twitter, he would be building Bitcoin. He elaborated to say both companies had a role in building the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
In our Nov. 29 edition of the Rip, we talked about how Dorsey’s move from the turbulent world of social media wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Instead, this pivot is an invitation for Jack to guide Square to the promised land of web3 and Bitcoin leadership. 🏰 ✨
$SQ lost 6.6% today.