Square’s “Cash App” has been updated to allow for purchasing of up to $10,000 worth of bitcoin a week. Since making the announcement, Square has seen its stock has climb nearly 3 percent.
Cash App is a peer-to-peer payment system from Square that allows people to pay each other directly and quickly. This new update has been in trial mode for select users over several months and is now available to the public.
Users will have access to bitcoin trading directly in the app with no additional fees being added by Square. Transactions fees will be set at a mid-market price that is averaged from various exchanges. Users are limited to purchases of up to $10,000 worth of bitcoin per week. The new feature is available to all Square customers except for those in New York, Georgia, Hawaii and Wyoming.
For people new to bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading, the process is simplified by Square as they are the ones holding on to your bitcoin and executing the transactions: the bitcoin is tied to your Cash App account, not your device.
While Square has a long history of secure transactions, this centralized system of holding users’ private keys is not an ideal security practice (see the recent Coincheck hack), so users will have to consider whether they want to trade security for ease of use.
To help newcomers to the cryptocurrency space, the company has created an interactive webpage to explain bitcoin to the average person. It also created an online picture book for children calledMy First Bitcoin and the Legend of Satoshi Nakamoto.