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Square CEO Jack Dorsey said late on Friday the company might jump into the bitcoin mining business.

Dorsey tweeted that the company is considering a “bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide.” The price of bitcoin rose above $62,000 following Dorsey’s string of tweets, as the world’s most popular cryptocurrency pushes toward its all-time high.

Dorsey’s goal would be to make crypto mining — the process of creating new bitcoins by solving increasingly complex computational problems — more accessible, much as Square’s original vision was to make it easier for small businesses and independent proprietors to take credit card payments. He wrote that bitcoin mining should be “as easy as plugging a rig into a power source.” Today, the bitcoin mining industry is dominated by large-scale players who can afford to buy tens of thousands of ASICs, the type of specialty gear used to mint new coin.

The team run by Jesse Dorogusker, who is the hardware lead at Square, will begin studying the technolody necessary to take this project on, according to Dorsey.

“We will incubate the bitcoin mining system project inside Square’s hardware team, starting with architecture, design, and prototyping of more efficient silicon, hashing algorithms, and power architectures,” Dorogusker wrote in a tweet.

Dorogusker said that Afshin Rezayee, the leader and architect of Square’s silicon team in Toronto since 2015, will lead the project, given silicon is at the core of this new initiative.

“Building a strong core in silicon is just a start. Delivering the value we imagine requires the full stack – silicon, hardware, software, manufacturing, and innovative distribution that can help us support the whole world,” continued Dorogusker.

Dorogusker is also leading Square’s project to build a crypto wallet.

Bitcoin mining should be easy, says Dorsey

Dorsey, who is also the CEO of Twitter, also outlined his thinking on why Square is looking to enter an already crowded field.

“Mining needs to be more distributed,” Dorsey wrote in a tweet. “The more decentralized this is, the more resilient the bitcoin network becomes.”

Dorsey shared in August that he personally was getting into minting bitcoin himself, with the help of bitcoin mining service provider Compass. In his tweets late Friday, the Square CEO advocated for this kind of egalitarian access to the mining world.

“Mining isn’t accessible to everyone,” wrote Dorsey. “Bitcoin mining should be as easy as plugging a rig into a power source. There isn’t enough incentive today for individuals to overcome the complexity of running a miner for themselves.”

The Square CEO went on to share his thoughts on the need for more of a focus on vertical integration, as well as on silicon design, which he says is too concentrated among a few companies.

The Square boss also jumped into the energy debate surrounding bitcoin’s carbon footprint.

“Driving towards clean and efficient energy use is great for bitcoin’s economics, impact, and scalability. Energy is a system-level problem that requires innovation in silicon, software, and integration. What are the largest opportunities here?” continued Dorsey.

The announcement from Square comes as the U.S. eclipses China for the first time ever as the world’s top destination for bitcoin miners. The U.S. is also flush with renewable power sources.

Washington state is a mecca for hydropowered mining farms. New York produces more hydroelectric power than any other state east of the Rocky Mountains, and it counts its nuclear power plants toward its 100% carbon-free electricity goal. Meanwhile, Texas’ share of renewables is growing over time, with 20% of its power coming from wind as of 2019. The Texas grid also continues to rapidly add more wind and solar power.

Texas also has a deregulated power grid with real-time spot pricing that lets customers choose between power providers, and crucially, its political leaders are pro-crypto. Those are dream conditions for miners who want a kind welcome and cheap energy sources.

“If you’re looking to relocate hundreds of millions of dollars of miners out of China, you want to make sure you have geographic, political, and jurisdictional stability. You also want to make sure there are private property rights protections for the assets that you are relocating,” said Darin Feinstein, co-founder of Core Scientific. 

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

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Ether and related stocks gain amid the latest crypto craze: Tokenization

A representation of cryptocurrency Ethereum is placed on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on June 16, 2023.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Stocks tied to the price of ether, better known as ETH, were higher on Wednesday, reflecting renewed enthusiasm for the crypto asset amid a surge of interest in stablecoins and tokenization.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a bitcoin miner that announced plans this week to make ETH its primary treasury reserve asset, jumped about 20%. It’s gained more than 1,000% since the announcement. Betting platform SharpLink Gaming, which has also initiated an ETH treasury strategy, added more than 11%. Bit Digital, which last week exited bitcoin mining to focus on its ETH treasury and staking plans, jumped more than 6%.

“We’re finally at the point where real use cases are emerging, and stablecoins have been the first version of that at scale but they’re going to open the door to a much bigger story around tokenizing other assets and using digital assets in new ways,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens.

On Tuesday, as bitcoin ETFs snapped a 15-day streak of inflows, ether ETFs saw $40 million in inflows led by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust. ETH ETFs came back to life in June after much concern that they were becoming zombie funds.

The price of the coin itself was last higher by 5%, according to Coin Metrics, though it’s still down 24% this year.

Ethereum has been struggling with an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about the network’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year, has not helped.

The Ethereum network’s smart contracts capability makes it a prominent platform for the tokenization of traditional assets, which includes U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee this week called Ethereum “the backbone and architecture” of stablecoins. Both Tether (USDT) and Circle‘s USD Coin (USDC) are issued on the network.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee on being named chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies

BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund (known as BUIDL, which stands for USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) also launched on Ethereum last year before expanding to other blockchain networks.

Tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of publicly traded securities, real world assets or any other form of value. Holders of tokenized assets don’t have outright ownership of the assets themselves.

The latest wave of interest in ETH-related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood this week that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s IPO and the Senate passage of its proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.

Ether, which turns 10 years old at the end of July, is sitting about 75% off its all-time high.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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China’s Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

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China's Honor launches new challenge to Samsung with thin foldable smartphone and a big battery

Honor launched the Honor Magic V5 on Wednesday July 2, as it looks to challenge Samsung in the foldable space.

Honor

Honor on Wednesday touted the slimness and battery capacity of its newly launched thin foldable phone, as it lays down a fresh challenge to market leader Samsung.

The Honor Magic V5 goes will initially go on sale in China, but the Chinese tech firm will likely bring the device to international markets later this year.

The company, which spun off from Chinese tech giant Huawei in 2020, is looking to stand out from rivals with key features of the Magic V5, like artificial intelligence, battery and size.

Honor said the Magic V5 is 8.8 mm to 9mm when folded, depending on the color choice. The phone’s predecessor, the Magic V3 — Honor skipped the Magic V4 name — was 9.2 mm when folded. Honor said the Magic V5 weighs 217 grams to 222 grams, again, depending on the color model. The previous version was 226 grams.

In China, Honor will launch a special 1 terabyte storage size version of the Magic V5, which it says will have a battery capacity of more than 6000 milliampere-hour — among the highest for foldable phones.

Honor has tried hard to tout these features, as competition in foldables ramps up, even as these types of devices have a very small share of the overall smartphone market.

Honor vs. Samsung

Foldables represented less than 2% of the overall smartphone market in 2024, according to International Data Corporation. Samsung was the biggest player with 34% market share followed by Huawei with just under 24%, IDC added. Honor took the fourth spot with a nearly 11% share.

Honor is looking to get a head start on Samsung, which has its own foldable launch next week on July 9.

Francisco Jeronimo, a vice president at the International Data Corporation, said the Magic V5 is a strong offering from Honor.

“This is the dream foldable smartphone that any user who is interested in this category will think of,” Jeronimo told CNBC, pointing to features such as the battery.

“This phone continues to push the bar forward, and it will challenge Samsung as they are about to launch their seventh generation of foldable phones,” he added.

The thinness of a foldable phone has become a battleground for smartphone makers to appeal to consumers who want the large screen size the device has to offer without extra weight.

At its event next week, Samsung is expected to release a foldable that is thinner than its predecessor and could come close to challenging Honor’s offering by way of size, analysts said. If that happens, then Honor will be facing more competition, especially against Samsung, which has a bigger global footprint.

“The biggest challenge for Honor is the brand equity and distribution reach vs Samsung, where the Korean vendor has the edge,” Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

Honor’s push into international markets beyond China is still fairly young, with the company looking to build up its brand.

“Further, if Samsung catches up with a thinner form-factor in upcoming iterations, as it has been the real pioneer in foldables with its vertical integration expertise from displays to batteries, the differentiating factor might narrow for Honor,” Shah added.

Vertical integration refers to when a company owns several parts of a product’s supply chain. Samsung has a display and battery business which provides the components for its foldables.

Honor talks up AI

Smartphone players, including Honor, have also looked to stand out via the AI features available on their device.

In March, Honor pledged a $10 billion investment in AI over the next five years, with part of that going toward the development of next-generation agents that are seen as more advanced personal assistants.

Honor said its AI assistant Yoyo can interact with other AI models, such as those created by DeepSeek and Alibaba in China, to create presentation decks.

The company also flagged its AI agent can hail a taxi ride across multiple apps in China, automatically accepting the quickest ride to arrive? and cancelling the rest.

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