Square CEO Jack Dorsey says the company is starting a “deep technical investigation” to create an open-source Bitcoin mining system.
Bitcoin influencer Jack Dorsey on Friday disclosed that his fintech company Square is considering building a globally accessible Bitcoin mining system that would aim to make mining the cryptocurrency easy and accessible as you could only imagine.
Dorsey informed in a tweet: “Square is considering building a Bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide. If we do this, we’d follow our hardware wallet model: build in the open in collaboration with the community.”
Dorsey’s goal would be to make crypto mining, the process of creating new bitcoins by solving increasingly complex computational problems, more accessible. Same as Square’s original vision was to make it easier for small businesses and independent proprietors to take credit card payments. He wrote that bitcoin mining should be “as easy as plugging a rig into a power source.” Today, the bitcoin mining industry is dominated by large-scale players who can afford to buy tens of thousands of ASICs, the type of specialty gear used to mint new coin.
According to Dorsey, in order to maintain the Bitcoin network’s security in the long run, the process of mining needs to be more distributed. At the moment, Bitcoin mining has a very high barrier of entry, thanks to the large amounts of hash power required to generate any significant returns.
Until the ban, Bitcoin mining was heavily concentrated in China, but with the government’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies in China, there has been a move of bitcoin miners and mining operations into other areas of the world.
“If you’re looking to relocate hundreds of millions of dollars of miners out of China, you want to make sure you have geographic, political, and jurisdictional stability. You also want to make sure there are private property rights protections for the assets that you are relocating,” said Darin Feinstein, co-founder of Core Scientific.