According to an analysis from Nomura Instinet, Square seems to be immune from bitcoin’s moves as its mobile payment app grew despite a drop in demand for the cryptocurrency. Square Inc made headlines when it announced that its Square Cash app would be a welcoming place for bitcoin. Since that announcement, though the cryptocurrency market has cratered, the app continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
According to the data from Instinet it is found that Square Cash, which officially launched crypto trading in late January, has been able to “decouple” from bitcoin and is growing roughly three times faster than Paypal’s Venmo, with nearly 2 million downloads per month in May and June.
Square is more than just a bitcoin play. A lot of people were apprehensive because it went up with bitcoin, but instead, it’s decoupling.. – Dan Dolev, executive director and analyst at Instinet
Bitcoin did see a spike in price late last year which explains the surge in Cash App downloads around December, when bitcoin was nearing $20,000 and Square first announced it was testing support for bitcoin, as according to Dolev. Bitcoin prices have seen a downturn of more than 65 percent since that peak.
The founder and Chief Executive of Square; Jack Dorsey is a big supporter of bitcoin. In 2014, he made possible for merchants to accept bitcoin as a payment method. His last year’s Tweet states, “Bitcoin: we tried this with our eCommerce store years back. Didn’t see much. Would love to see a digital currency thrive.”
We can still hope to see bitcoin bloom as the stock is up 86 percent this year, and 154 percent year over year. But at the same time, Nomura’s prophecy suggests that Square’s ability to achieve its target could be affected by pricing pressure, slowing gross payment volume and new offerings that are entering the market from competitors.
