Crypto-Enabled Payment Firm Square Recruits Former Google Product Director Steve Lee

Published at: June 13, 2019

United States-based bitcoin (BTC)-supporting payments service Square Crypto announced that it recruited former Google product director Steve Lee in a tweet published on June 12.

Square Crypto was announced in March of this year when the organization joined Twitter, and planned to hire crypto engineers and designers to work on the bitcoin and crypto ecosystem, paying them in cryptocurrency.

Just hours before announcing Lee’s recruitment, the official Twitter Square Crypto account asked — in what appeared to be a joke — the community to welcome the company’s “summer intern and inaugural hire, Gary Fuches.” Then, the author of the next tweet claimed to be Fuches and noted his commitment to blockchain technology:

“Hello everybody! My name's Gary and I'm here to say, I love blockchain in a very big way!!!”

A significant portion of the respondents reacted by correcting him and noting that he should have said bitcoin, instead of blockchain. One hour later, the management announced the hiring of Steve Lee in another tweet:

“Hey guys. Management again. Unfortunately, things didn't work out with Gary. However, we think we've found somebody who can live up to his commitment to decentralization. Please welcome Steve Lee, aka @moneyball, to the Square Crypto team.”

As the next — and last — tweet sent by the account notes, Lee is a former product director at Google, an angel investor and a volunteer project manager for bitcoin development. His LinkedIn profile further notes that he has also been a software engineer at technology giant IBM and a product manager intern at Yahoo. Lee, as some members of the community did in response to Gary’s alleged tweet, noted:

“Bitcoin, not blockchain. Very excited about this opportunity!”

As Cointelegraph reported at the beginning of May, Square saw a new revenue high from bitcoin sales through its Cash app, while profits from bitcoin sales remained low.

In February, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey — also the founder and CEO of Square — said that rolling out the Lightning Network on Square’s Cash App is a question of “when, not if.”

Tags
Related Posts
Square Crypto Hires Blockstream Co-Founder, Open Source Bitcoin Dev
Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused branch of mobile payment company Square, has hired Blockstream co-founder and Bitcoin (BTC) developer Matt Corallo. Square Crypto announced the news in an official Twitter post on Aug. 20. Matt Corallo also commented on the announcement, saying: “So excited to be joining the @sqcrypto team over the coming weeks. Experimenting with different models to accelerate Bitcoin OSS is awesome!” As indicated in his Twitter post, Corallo is a Bitcoin Open Source Developer who previously worked at Bitcoin development company Chaincode Labs. Per his LinkedIn profile, Corallo has worked there for the past two years and 8 …
Blockchain / Aug. 20, 2019
Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey Expounds on Planned Crypto Team
Disclaimer: This article has been updated following revisions. Jack Dorsey, the founder of social media website Twitter and mobile payments provider Square, went into depth on his plans for his new team dedicated to improving the crypto sector at Square in an interview with The Next Web on June 14. According to Dorsey, this initiative, Square Crypto, will add to the fiat payment company’s operations by providing an infrastructure for frictionless internet payments. Right now, he says that regulations and partnerships slow Square down — obstacles that he hopes to avoid in the future with an improved crypto infrastructure: “Just …
Blockchain / June 14, 2019
Bitcoin average transaction value increases 500% since July
The average value of Bitcoin (BTC) transactions has increased dramatically since July this year. The average transaction value was sitting at approximately $25,000 per transaction four months ago, but posted a yearly high on Oct. 20 at $151,000 per transfer — representing an increase of more than 500%. The latest spike, as shown by crypto analytics platform BitInfoCharts’ data, saw the average value of a transaction increase almost $50,000, up from $105,000, in the last 48 hours. This surge in transaction value comes shortly after Bitcoin’s trading dominance rose to levels not seen since 2017. The $151,000 average value is …
Bitcoin / Oct. 21, 2020
New Google Joke Advertisement Questions the Validity of Cryptocurrency as Money
Google entered the cryptocurrency-as-money debate on Tuesday, Oct. 9, arguing over its validity during an introductory video for a new feature from its Google Assistant tool. While demonstrating how its Call Screen caller ID function works, two Google presenters enter into a brief discussion about cryptocurrency in a spoof argument. The Call Screen shows the identity of an incoming call as being from the “electric company,” and the call’s purpose — Call Screen’s other feature — as one presenter’s “bill being super high.” “Cryptocurrency mining takes a lot of energy,” the presenter argues, which elicits the response from the other: …
Bitcoin / Oct. 10, 2018
Jack Dorsey’s Block hits $1.3B in Q1 profits, $43M in BTC trading revenue
Block, the pro-Bitcoin (BTC) umbrella company that hosts Cash App, Square and Afterpay, continues its growth in 2022. According to its Shareholder letter, in the first quarter of 2022, gross profits are “up 34% year over year.” In total, the group netted $1.29 billion in gross profits. However, operating costs were also up “$1.52 billion in the first quarter of 2022, up 70% year over year.” The group explains that the acquisition of Afterpay, a buy now pay later service, could explain the increasing costs. In total net Block’s revenues reached $3.96 billion from January to March 2022, down 22% …
Adoption / May 19, 2022