Share this article
Square Funds Designer to Make Crypto Wallets Usable by Anyone
Maggie Valentine was awarded a grant to help make bitcoin wallets less complicated for non-crypto users.
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 10:26 a.m. Published Nov 1, 2020, 9:19 p.m.
Make us preferred on Google
Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency arm of the payments company, said in a tweet Friday it has awarded a grant to a designer who's trying to make bitcoin wallets usable by anyone, regardless of technical proficiency.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
- The work Square Crypto will be funding will seek to answer a question the grant recipient, Maggie Valentine, put forward in a proposal, namely: "How can we provide an intuitive experience for non-crypto users while preserving the security of a user’s funds?"
- The award comes less than a month after Square, which is helmed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, said it had purchased 4,709 bitcoins for $50 million, representing 1% of the firm's assets.
- The grant seems to be in line with statements made by company CFO Amrita Ahuja at the time Square's investment was announced: "We believe that bitcoin has the potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future," Ahuja said. "For a company that is building products based on a more inclusive future, this investment is a step on that journey."
- A more inclusive future that includes bitcoin would also seem to be a profitable one for Square. The company's Cash App has been a major revenue driver for the publicly traded fintech.
Read more: Bitcoin Drove Half of Square’s Cash App Revenue in the 4th Quarter
More For You
Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.
What to know:
Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.
The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.
More For You
Deus X CEO Tim Grant: We aren't replacing finance; we're integrating it
The Deus X CEO discussed his journey into digital assets, the company's infrastructure-led growth strategy, and why his Consensus Hong Kong panel promises "real talk only."
What to know:
- Tim Grant entered crypto in 2015 after early exposure to Ripple and Coinbase, drawn by blockchain’s ability to improve traditional finance rather than replace it.
- Deus X combines investing and operating to build regulated digital finance infrastructure across payments, prime services, and institutional DeFi.
- Grant will be speaking at Consensus Hong Kong in February.
Top Stories
