Square will probably come up with a Bitcoin mining system.

Jack Dorsey Expressed: “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. First some thoughts and questions.

Mining needs to be more distributed. The core job of a miner is to securely settle transactions without the need for trusted 3rd parties. This is critical well after the last bitcoin is mined. The more decentralized this is, the more resilient the Bitcoin network becomes. True?

Mining needs to be more efficient. Driving towards clean and efficient energy use is great for Bitcoin’s economics, impact, and scalability. Energy is a system-level problem that requires innovation in silicon, software, and integration. What are the largest opportunities here?

Silicon design is too concentrated into a few companies. This means supply is likely overly constrained. Silicon development is very expensive, requires long term investment, and is best coupled tightly with software and system design. Why aren’t more companies doing this work?

There isn’t enough focus on vertical integration. Considering hardware, software, productization, and distribution requires accountability for delivering to an end customer vs improving a single technology in the chain. Does seeing this as a single system improve accessibility?

Mining isn’t accessible to everyone. Bitcoin mining should be as easy as plugging a rig into a power source. There isn’t enough incentive today for individuals to overcome the complexity of running a miner for themselves. What are the biggest barriers for people running miners?

Our team led by Jesse Dorogusker will start the deep technical investigation required to take on this project. We’d love your thoughts, ideas, concerns, and collaboration. Should we do this? Why or why not? We’ll update this thread as we make our decisions. And now over to Jesse.

Community Response:  I’m afraid you shouldn’t because there are many more pressing matters that could be addressed with your resources.

There is nothing more pressing than the incentive structure of the current monetary system which enables millions of innocent lives to be lost. The separation of money and state is required for a peaceful and prosperous millennium.

Efficiency is not enough. I think this project could be great if you committed to it being carbon negative. Commit to new renewable energy sources brought online equal to the amount of energy used by the rigs. This would remove the much of the environmental concern around mining.

Focusing time and energy on helping Ethereum scale should also be a priority. Square could better support DeFi tools and Twitter could be invaluable to DAOs and NFTs. How about a Twitter DAO? Help make crypto part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.