Bitcoin (BTC)-supporting payments service Square Crypto is giving the first of what will be many grants to support open-source Bitcoin projects to BTCPay Foundation.
BTCPay receives $100,000 grant
On Sept. 14, Square Crypto, the crypto-focused branch of mobile payment company Square, took to Twitter to announce that it is providing BTCPay Foundation with a grant of $100,000 to support BTCPay Server, an open-source cryptocurrency payment processor.
BTCPay Server can allocate the funds to create anything, “as long as it’s free and open-source software that improves the security, scalability, privacy, user experience, or fungibility of Bitcoin — or all of the above.” The Square Crypto team added:
“BTCPay represents everything we love about open-source bitcoin projects. It exemplifies the ideals of our community and promotes adoption by letting merchants accept bitcoin, control their private keys, and self-validate their coins. It also creates powerful real world applications for bitcoin without sacrificing user experience or requiring trusted third parties.”
Square Crypto went on to explain why they are giving a “bunch of money” to BTCPay Server, a product that appears to be in direct competition with its own services. Square explained:
“Existing payments companies have a choice to make: adapt or be left behind. This isn’t an investment in a competitor, it’s an investment in the future of money — something that Square obviously has a stake in.”
Square and BTC infrastructure
As CryptoX reported at the end of July, project manager at Square Crypto Steve Lee emphasized in a Twitter ask me anything that his team is particularly keen on developing support for the Bitcoin ecosystem. He added:
“We are very, very pro-Bitcoin. There is more than enough work for us to do there. That said, we are open to emerging use cases and technologies that complement Bitcoin.”
