Block CEO Jack Dorsey says his company will support stablecoins, despite long arguing that Bitcoin should serve as the Internet’s original monetary protocol.
In an interview with WIRED, Dorsey acknowledged the change, making it clear that it reflects customer demand rather than a shift in personal belief.
“I don’t like that we want to support stablecoins, but our customers want to use them,” he said. “I don’t think it’s wise to go from one gatekeeper to another.”
The move marks a pragmatic turn for one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal Bitcoin advocates. For years, Dorsey framed Block’s crypto strategy around Bitcoin alone, supporting development of mining hardware and integrating the asset into products such as the Cash App.
The company first introduced the ability for users to buy and sell bitcoin on the Cash app, and the company received a BitLicense from regulators in New York the following year.
Block started a Bitcoin development arm and funded Bitcoin and Lightning Network developers in 2019, and began accumulating bitcoin for its corporate treasury in 2020. It currently has 8,888.3 BTC, worth more than $600 million.
Stablecoins have risen in the meantime. Fiat currency-pegged tokens now circulate widely across crypto markets and cross-border payments, with their combined market capitalization at $318 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The competition is also intensifying. Payments companies including Stripe and PayPal have already integrated stablecoin infrastructure, increasing pressure on Block to offer similar options to avoid losing users, though Dorsey did not mention these during the interview.
This is not the first time that Dorsey’s Block has reluctantly endorsed stablecoins.
Last November, Blocks Cash App announced that it was adding support for stablecoins, making them “interoperable with a customer’s USD cash balance.” Stablecoin deposits, the firm said, would be instantly converted to US dollars in users’ balances.
This development was notable as back in 2024, when Facebook was working on its since scrapped Libra stablecoin and the Libra Association behind it, Dorsey said with a definitive “Hell no” that he would not participate in the crypto payment scheme.
At the time, Dorsey said in particular that the project “was born out of a corporate intention, and it’s not consistent with what I personally believe and what I want our company to stand for.”
In true bitcoin purist fashion, he goes on to argue that Bitcoin’s decentralized design makes it the best candidate for an open financial protocol.
The comments come after the company cut its workforce by around 40%, citing structural changes driven by artificial intelligence. While the layoffs sparked controversy over whether the company had overhired, Dorsey deflected the question during the WIRED interview and doubled down on the AI angle.
“These [AI] tools present a future that completely changes how a business is structured,” Dorsey said in the interview, noting that the layoffs weren’t about fixing the company’s costs and revenue per employee because his company was “already ahead” of all its competitors on those metrics.
“I don’t know what the final outcome is, but I know it will have a dramatic effect,” Dorsey added.
