Square, a mobile payment startup, on Thursday reported that it generated $125 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2019 from Bitcoin sales through its Cash App.
The Bitcoin-related revenue figure almost doubled compared to the previous quarter, as in Q1 2019, the company reported $65.5 million in revenue from Bitcoin sales, which was itself a record for the company.
The Bitcoin price rally since April also boosted the revenue growth of the platform in terms of volume and resulted in a gross profit of $2 million.
Launched as a mobile-based payment platform by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Square extended its support towards cryptocurrency trading in November 2017 by the launch of its peer-to-peer Cash app.
Bleeding money despite impressive figures
In total, the Cash App generated $260 million in revenue, which shows that its Bitcoin sales brought in almost half of the total reported revenue. The unaudited figures also detailed that the company spent $122.9 million in acquiring the cryptocurrency.
“Our Cash App ecosystem has reached significant scale, generating $260 million in total net revenue in the second quarter of 2019. Excluding Bitcoin, Cash App revenue was $135 million,” the revenue report noted.
Despite the impressive figures, the platform incurred a loss of $7 million in Q2, while in the previous quarter the loss was recorded at $38 million.
“In the second quarter of 2019, total net revenue grew 44% year over year to $1.17 billion, and Adjusted Revenue grew 46% year over year to $563 million,” the report stated. “Excluding the loss of $5 million as a result of the mark-to-market valuation of our Eventbrite investment, net loss was $2 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $105 million in the second quarter of 2019, up 54% year over year.”
The payment company also set up a dedicated crypto team, called Square Crypto, to make open-source contributions to the Bitcoin protocol. The company even hired Steve Lee, an ex-director at Google, as the first member of its new crypto team, FortuneZ reported.
(Photo: Square)
