$37 Million of Bitcoin Revenue Helps Square Accelerate Growth in Q2

Square has reported its Q2 2018 financial results, revealing that $37 million of Bitcoin-related revenue helped the company accelerate its growth during the period. While the company still made very little profit from cryptocurrency trading in Q2, management is content with not trying to push the monetization of the feature just yet.



Also Read: Coinmarketcap Launches Professional API and Derivatives Markets

$37 Million of Bitcoin Revenue

Square Inc (NYSE:SQ), the developer of the mobile payment app Square Cash, has posted its financial results for the second quarter of 2018 on Wednesday, August 1st, showing very strong performance. Total net revenue was $815 million, up 48% year over year, and Adjusted Revenue was $385 million, up 60% year over year.

The figures show a pattern of accelerated growth when compared to the same results in the first quarter of 2018 with 45% and 51%, respectively. Despite delivering better results than analysts expected, the company’s stock price fell slightly in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Bitcoin revenue contributed $37 million to total net revenue in the second quarter, and related costs were $36.6 million resulting in a minor add to adjusted revenue of just $400,000. Still, this means that Square effectively doubled the profit its Bitcoin business brought in during the period, compared with just a meager $200,000 in Q1.

Still Learning About Crypto

Speaking with reporters prior to the company’s earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said that: “We’re not trying to push on the monetization of bitcoin today. The costs are effectively [the] costs for us to go into the market and buy bitcoin.”

The above seems to indicate that Square is still in the learning phase of its Bitcoin strategy which CEO Jack Dorsey outlined last quarter. He said at the time: “The reason we started this initially is because we did see cash customers wanting to buy crypto, utilizing their cash accounts. So, we made that a little bit easier. But we want to learn what this meant for us as a company and also for our industry and really pushed ourselves a lot to make sure that we were best in class in terms of providing a simple easy of exchange and then we can build off of that.”

Should Square shareholders try to push the company’s management to focus on making a more meaningful profit from bitcoin? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Square.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.