Jack Dorsey is an entrepreneur and cofounder of Block. His Bitcoin involvement includes Cash App and Bitkey, developer funding through Spiral, and the Proto mining project. His company can build products and support development; it neither owns Bitcoin’s rules nor has the power to change them on its own.
The official profile checked on 21 October 2026 lists Jack Dorsey as Block Head, chairman and cofounder of Block. That is a significant role in a company that decides how to develop and fund its products. Bitcoin, however, runs on independently operated nodes: computers that verify blocks and transactions. Dorsey cannot order all those nodes to adopt new rules. His influence is better understood through what his teams build and what people choose to use. [1]
Older reports can make these names sound like separate companies or different names for the same product. The announcement of 1 December 2021 introduced Block as the company’s new name while keeping Square as the brand serving sellers. It also announced the change from Square Crypto to Spiral. A merchant using Square and a developer receiving a Spiral grant are therefore engaging with different activities within the same company. The list of projects in that announcement does not automatically describe its current structure. [2]
Bitcoin has no head office paying every developer a salary. Spiral helps fund work that can benefit people beyond the company. The 2020 programme description, published under Square Crypto, sets out support for free, open-source projects and developer tools. A grant might free up time to test code and find bugs. Open-source code can be examined and used by others, but funding does not buy voting rights that automatically make a network rule change take effect. [3]
Suppose you buy bitcoin in Cash App and leave it in your account. Under the US terms, the service holds those assets for customers, who retain title. The service nevertheless provides custody: the displayed balance does not mean you hold the private keys needed to sign a transaction yourself. Sending funds depends on the provider and the account terms. This matters when comparing Cash App with Bitkey, where keys are distributed across several locations. [4]
Bitkey uses Multisig, meaning transactions need signatures from several keys. Its 2-of-3 model requires two of three: one key is on the phone, another in the hardware device and a third on Bitkey’s server. The company cannot spend with its single key alone. The user holds the phone and device, so can produce the required signatures without the server key. This distributes control differently from a Cash App account; which keys and backups remain accessible still matters. [5]
What happens if the Bitkey app or servers no longer work? The documentation describes an Emergency Exit Kit for this situation: a PDF containing an encrypted app key, saved to the cloud account during setup. With working hardware and a suitable tool, the user can decrypt the file’s key and produce the signatures needed to move funds without Bitkey servers. This route therefore requires an available file and working hardware. It does not promise recovery after every piece of recovery material has been lost. [5]
Losing both the phone and the hardware is a different situation. Previously configured Recovery Contacts—trusted people involved in Bitkey recovery—can help unlock the encrypted app-key backup. That backup is held in your cloud account. A contact has information needed for decryption, not the spending key itself; without access to the backup, they cannot send the funds on their own. The person’s help and the available backup work together. This is a different process from leaving independently of the service. [5]
Dorsey’s company also works on equipment miners use to find new blocks. An April 2023 Proto article by Thomas Templeton and Naiose Irwin describes ASIC development: a chip designed for the specialised calculations of Bitcoin mining. The team wanted to broaden hardware supply and let other manufacturers build on its work wherever the technology could be opened up. The article records that plan at the time. Present-day product performance and the openness of every component require separate, specific evidence. [6]
For the clearest picture, read this entry together with Jameson Lopp, Jack Mallers, Lightning Network. The reverse links also lead from BTC Prague, Jack Mallers.