Why it's worth it for Jack Dorsey to make nice with stablecoins

• Key insight: Bitcoin bull Block is adding support for stablecoins via Cash App transfers. 
• What's at stake: Rivals such as PayPal, Stripe and the card networks are also building stablecoin products. 
• Forward look: Block may use easy stablecoin conversions to enhance spendable balances for consumer customers, potentially increasing usage of Cash App for payments. 

Block CEO Jack Dorsey has long touted bitcoin as central to the future of digital money and has taken a dim view of stablecoins, an opinion that's not stopping the company from supporting the crypto alternative.

The payment company this week enabled users to send and receive stablecoins on its Cash App transfer system. This move comes despite Dorsey characterizing stablecoins as potentially "undermining" bitcoin as an "open protocol" for money transmission.

Block, which signaled it would support stablecoins as early as 2024, is making its move to broadly enable the digital asset as the financial services industry pours investment into stablecoins, which are still a miniscule part of the overall payments market but are gaining steam as a way to improve payment processing for transactions that start and end with traditional currency. 

A bridge to bitcoin, not a replacement

Block characterized its support for stablecoins as a way to build overall usage of digital assets and related technology.

"As stablecoins continue to gain global adoption, we see an opportunity to get millions more Cash App customers comfortable using open financial rails," said Miles Suter, bitcoin product lead at Block, in a release. "Once they're on those rails, they're one step closer to bitcoin."

To use Cash App, customers send and receive USDC on Cash App's platform. Stablecoins on Cash App auto-convert to U.S. dollars. Cash App manages sourcing, conversion and settlement.

To send stablecoins, customers can navigate to Cash App's payment tab, paste the recipient's wallet address in the search bar, then pay in U.S. dollars with their Cash App balance. 

To receive stablecoins, customers can select "Deposit USDC" in Cash App's Money Tab. After picking a supported network, they receive a wallet address to accept stablecoins. Cash App converts the USDC into U.S. dollars in their Cash App balance.

Cash App currently supports USDC on Solana, ethereum, Polygon and Arbitrum. USDC send and receive will be fee-free. 

"[This] is the moment that stablecoins stop being a crypto product and become mainstream payments infrastructure," Aishwary Gupta, global head of business at Polygon, told American Banker, noting Block's vast size as a source of mainstream scale. "Cash App's structural choice matters as much as the launch itself: Treating stablecoins as a payment surface rather than an investment product is the model that works at consumer scale, and it's the structure other fintechs will land on."

Block views stablecoins on Cash App as a complementary option that provides customers greater flexibility. In this model, bitcoin serves as the foundation for an open and borderless financial system, while stablecoins serve as a stepping stone to quickly move digital dollars, according to Block.

Block referred questions to a series of social media posts from Suter reiterating the company's focus on bitcoin as a primary digital asset across Block's different business units.

"Making bitcoin everyday money remains my top goal at Cash App, Square, Bitkey and Block," Suter said  "We remain singularly focused on bitcoin becoming the native currency of the internet."

Suter described stablecoins as upgraded fiat. "And for [stablecoins] we've hidden away all the 'crypto' as far away as possible within the app, so that the experience feels … sleek and seamless," Suter said. 

Super app

Block has made numerous moves over the past year to boost its cryptocurrency strategy. Square, Block's business-facing unit, in late 2025 enabled U.S. merchants to accept bitcoin with zero fees through 2026. Cash also launched a "bitcoin map" that allows consumers to find nearby Square businesses that accept the cryptocurrency.

Dorsey in recent years redirected funding away from TBD (Block's decentralized finance unit) to pour more resources into the Bitkey bitcoin wallet and bitcoin mining initiatives, and has pledged to invest 10% of its gross profits from bitcoin products back into purchasing more bitcoin.

Block's support for stablecoins adds another payment option as the company competes with card networks and digital payment companies like PayPal and Stripe. Negating stablecoins would leave at least one option off of the table. 

"This is less about the small business side and more about the Cash App consumer facing side. I think the long-term play for Cash App is giving consumers access to more payment types, with the idea being that if they don't want to use bitcoin to make payments, they can also use stablecoins, just like they can use debit cards and other payment types," Tony DeSanctis, a managing director at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker. 

And while stablecoins are not used directly for payments, Block's move targets the "off-ramp," or converting stablecoins to a more spendable option. 

"They are using stablecoin support to accumulate repaid balances," Richard Crone, a payments consultant, told America Banker, comparing the strategy to PayPal's support of crypto and its own PYUSD stablecoin. "That has a flywheel effect that will increase monthly active users."

"And to be a super app you need access to different kinds of payment types," he said.