Bitcoin purist Jack Dorsey says that his firm is reluctantly giving in to stablecoin craze

The shift comes as stablecoins surge in popularity and competitors like Stripe and PayPal add stablecoin options, increasing market pressure.

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What to know:

• Block CEO Jack Dorsey says the company will support stablecoins due to customer demand, despite previously advocating for Bitcoin as the sole internet money protocol.
• The shift comes as stablecoins surge in popularity and competitors like Stripe and PayPal add stablecoin options, increasing market pressure.
• Dorsey maintains that Bitcoin's decentralized model remains his preferred choice for an open financial protocol.

Block CEO Jack Dorsey says his company will support stablecoins, despite having long argued that Bitcoin should serve as the internet’s native money protocol.

In an interview with WIRED, Dorsey acknowledged the change while making clear it reflects customer demand rather than a shift in personal belief.

“I don’t like that we’re going to support stablecoins but our customers want to use them,” he said. “I don’t think it’s wise to go from one gatekeeper to another.”

The move marks a pragmatic turn for one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal Bitcoin advocates. For years, Dorsey framed Block’s crypto strategy around Bitcoin alone, backing mining hardware development and integrating the asset into products such as Cash App.

The company first introduced the option for users to buy and sell bitcoin on the Cash App, and the company received a BitLicense from New York regulators the following year.

Block started a Bitcoin development arm and funded Bitcoin and Lightning Network developers in 2019, and started accumulating bitcoin for its corporate treasury in 2020. It currently holds 8,888.3 BTC, worth more than $600 million.

Stablecoins have surged in the meantime. Fiat currency-pegged tokens now circulate widely across crypto markets and cross-border payments, with their total market capitalization reaching $318 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Competition is also intensifying. Payment companies, including Stripe and PayPal, have already integrated stablecoin infrastructure, increasing pressure on Block to offer similar options to avoid losing users, though Dorsey didn’t mention these during the interview.

This isn't the first time Dorsey's Block has reluctantly endorsed stablecoins.

In November last year, Block’s Cash App announced it was adding support for stablecoins, making them “interoperable with a customer’s USD cash balance.” Stablecoin deposits, the firm said, would instantly be converted into U.S. dollars in users’ balances.

That development was notable as back in 2024, when Facebook was working on its since-scrapped Libra stablecoin and the Libra Association behind it, Dorsey said with a definitive “Hell no,” that he would not be joining the crypto payments scheme.

At the time, Dorsey notably said the project “was born out of a company’s intention, and it’s not consistent with what I personally believe and what I want our company to stand for.”

In true bitcoin purist fashion, he continues to argue that Bitcoin’s decentralized design makes it the best candidate for an open financial protocol.

The comments come after the company cut its workforce by roughly 40%, citing structural changes driven by artificial intelligence. While the layoffs sparked controversy over whether the company had overhired, Dorsey brushed off the question during the WIRED interview and doubled down on the AI angle.

“These [AI] tools are presenting a future that entirely changes how a company is structured,” Dorsey said in the interview, noting that the layoffs weren't about fixing the company's cost and revenue per employee, because his firm was "already ahead" of all of its competitors on those metrics.

“I don't know what the ultimate outcome is, but I do know it's going to have a dramatic effect,” Dorsey added.

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