After months of investigation by the U.S. federal government into Block's compliance behavior, Cash App decided to terminate the Bitcoin transfer feature via user tags, raising concerns among users about the app's risk management capabilities.
Cash App announced in a notice on its help page that it will "no longer support sending and receiving Bitcoin between $cashtags starting December 20, 2024." The company noted that users can still send and receive Bitcoin using the Lightning Network or the Bitcoin blockchain.
An inspection by the Wayback Machine in October showed no such notice. Furthermore, this change seems to only affect Bitcoin transfers and does not appear to impact other services, such as sending stocks or cash via unique identifiers called cashtags.
A spokesperson for Cash App stated that the company made this decision to "focus internal resources on the products and services that Bitcoin holders use and value most on Cash App."
Cash App (formerly Square Cash) was launched in 2013 as part of Block Inc. and initially served as a peer-to-peer payment system similar to PayPal's Venmo. Since then, it has expanded into a super app with features like Bitcoin and stock purchases, savings, lending, and even a prepaid Visa debit card issued by Sutton Bank.
It is currently unclear how much Bitcoin p2p transfer activity occurs on Cash App, as the platform has not disclosed this data. However, regulatory filings indicate that cryptocurrency operations have been profitable for the company, with Cash App generating over $65 million in Bitcoin gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2023, a 90% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. In the first few months of 2023, Cash App generated over $10.3 billion in net revenue, accounting for about 65% of Block's net revenue at that time.
As of December 2023, the app has 56 million active accounts, but it is currently unclear how many of those users have utilized cryptocurrency services. (crypto.news)

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