Jack Dorsey’s Square Wins Patent for Fiat-to-Crypto Payments Network

Jack Dorsey’s financial services company Square has won a U.S. patent for a new network that allows seamless crypto-to-fiat transactions. The technology would allow a sending party to pay in any currency while allowing the receiving party to be paid in any currency by converting the sender’s currency into the currency specified by the receiver. According to Coindesk, the patent suggests the system could be extended to add support for other asset classes including securities, derivatives or loans.

Why it matters:

• As stated in our 2020 crypto theses, Jack Dorsey is one of the top people to watch in 2020. His company Square is one of the primary retail onramps in the U.S. accounting for $150 million of bitcoin purchases in Q3, or 8.6% of the total bitcoin mined during that time (and growing).
• While the patent does not necessarily indicate Square is working on making this a real product, it does provide insight into how the company is thinking about making the UX of crypto payments more seamless.