Square buys approximately 4,709 BTC for $50 million
Square placed approximately $50 million of corporate cash into 4,709 BTC, making Bitcoin part of the balance sheet of a large public payments company.
Square announced on October 8 that it had purchased about 4,709 bitcoin for an aggregate $50 million. The position represented roughly one percent of Square's total assets at the end of the second quarter.
The company said it viewed Bitcoin as an instrument of economic empowerment and published details of its execution and custody process. That transparency mattered because it gave other corporate finance teams a concrete example of how a public company could acquire, account for and secure Bitcoin.
Square already had deep Bitcoin exposure through Cash App, so the purchase differed from MicroStrategy's treasury pivot. It nevertheless reinforced the idea that Bitcoin could sit directly on a public company's balance sheet rather than only inside a customer product.