“Clearly, it makes sense for every corporate balance sheet to contain Bitcoin.” This was stated in a recent statement by Amrita Ahuja, Square CFO, who joined the company in January 2019 from Blizzard Entertainment.
She joins a growing number of business people, from Tesla’s Zach Kirkhorn to Microstrategy’s Michael Saylor, who claim that Bitcoin is in the arsenal of any CFO. In fact, a recent advertisement for CFO in Time magazine cited “Bitcoin familiarity” as a prerequisite.
“We believe that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are expanding access to financial services, if you think about it globally,” she said. In October 2020, Square invested $50 million in Bitcoin, while last February it invested another $170 million.
Global perception is something of a second nature to Ahuja. Her father was born and raised in India and came to the United States in 1961. Ahuja grew up with her parents and siblings in Cleveland, with her mom – who was born in India but raised in Kenya – working as a housewife, as well as head of a day care centre with eight employees.
Square switched to Bitcoin in 2018 through the Cash App, a peer-to-peer payment platform where users can purchase Bitcoin stored in a digital wallet. The Cash App was launched in 2013. “Last year, we had 3 million customers who bought and sold Bitcoin on our platform, and in January we had 1 million new customers exclusively on Bitcoin,” Ahuja said.
Square wants to continue to support the wider adoption of cryptocurrency, says Ahuja. Cash App users will no longer pay transaction fees to send or receive Bitcoin, Square announced on March 17th.
