BLOCK
BITCOIN STRATEGIC OPERATIONS & OPEN INFRASTRUCTURE
STRATEGIC MEMORANDUM
Capital Allocation & Ecosystem Architecture
TO:
Block Leadership, Square, Cash App, Spiral, Proto & TBD Engineering Teams
FROM:
Jack Dorsey, Block Head & Bitcoin Strategy Steering Committee
DATE:
September 21, 2026
SUBJECT:
Block Bitcoin Strategy: Open Monetary Rails, Treasury Allocation & Mining
Decentralization
1. PURPOSE & PHILOSOPHICAL ALIGNMENT
Bitcoin is the native monetary protocol for the internet. Unlike closed, rent-seeking legacy clearing houses, Bitcoin
offers an open, permissionless, and neutral global standard that advances Block's founding mission: economic
empowerment. We do not view Bitcoin merely as an investable digital asset; we treat it as the foundational protocol
for the next generation of global commerce.
This memorandum de
fi
nes Block's integrated Bitcoin strategy across our corporate treasury, commercial business
units (Square and Cash App), and independent hardware and open-source software initiatives (Bitkey, Proto, and
Spiral). It reinforces our commitment to re-investing operating pro
fi
ts into Bitcoin, driving self-custody adoption, and
decentralizing mining hardware.
2. FOUR STRATEGIC PILLARS OF BLOCK'S BITCOIN ARCHITECTURE
All product divisions, treasury operations, and open-source engineering groups must align execution with four primary
directives:
Systematic Corporate Treasury Allocation:
Investing 10% of monthly gross pro
fi
t generated from our Bitcoin
products directly into purchases of Bitcoin, institutionalizing a disciplined, programmatic dollar-cost averaging
(DCA) balance sheet framework.
Democratizing Secure Self-Custody (Bitkey):
Accelerating worldwide adoption of Bitkey, our 2-of-3 multi-signature
hardware wallet that eliminates single points of failure by distributing private keys between the user's mobile
phone, physical hardware, and Block's recovery server.
Decentralizing Hashrate & Silicon (Proto):
Designing open-source mining chips, customized 3nm application-
speci
fi
c integrated circuits (ASICs), and modular mining rigs to break centralized hardware monopolies and
empower community-scale miners worldwide.
Open-Source Protocol Contribution (Spiral):
Providing unrestricted, non-commercial grants to independent Bitcoin
Core developers and Lightning Network engineers, ensuring the base layer remains secure, decentralized, and
censorship-resistant.
Core Ecosystem Tenet:
Block does not build walled gardens around Bitcoin. Every cryptographic library, hardware
schematic, and mining protocol we engineer is released open-source. The stronger, more resilient, and more
decentralized Bitcoin becomes globally, the more value
fl
ows through our ecosystem.
3. CASH APP & SQUARE LIGHTNING INTEGRATION
Lightning Network connectivity must remain the default settlement channel across both Cash App consumer rails and
Square merchant terminals. Processing micro-transactions and everyday retail checkouts over Lightning eliminates
traditional interchange fees and delivers instantaneous settlement for small business sellers.
Block, Inc.
—
Con
fi
dential Internal Strategy Directive
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