Square Might Have a Bitcoin Problem
The fintech company has been counting on fees from cryptocurrency trading, but quarterly results raise questions about the business’s growth potential.
Bitcoin blues.
Photographer: Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg
The easy money days for Square Inc. may be behind it.
On Thursday, the fintech company — known for its merchant checkout system and its digital wallet Cash App that enables person-to-person payments, stock investing and Bitcoin trading — reported lower-than-expected revenue for the quarter ended in September, mainly due to disappointing results from cryptocurrency trading. That business, which allows users to buy and sell Bitcoin through the app, generating fees for Square in the process, had $1.82 billion in sales, up 11% from a year ago but significantly below the $2.47 billion median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.