Jack Dorsey’s Block to build an open bitcoin mining system

(Reuters) – Block Inc Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said in a tweet on Thursday that the fintech firm is building an open bitcoin mining system, as the newly re-branded company looks to expand beyond its payment business and into new technologies like blockchain.

In October, Dorsey said that Block, formerly Square, was considering building a bitcoin mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide.

In a tweet thread on Thursday, Block’s general manager for hardware, Thomas Templeton, laid out the company’s plans about building the mining system.

“We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining. We’re interested because mining goes far beyond creating new bitcoin. We see it as a long-term need for a future that is fully decentralized and permissionless,” Templeton tweeted.

(Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)