Block's bitcoin checkout goes live in Vegas, a significant step in making it 'everyday money'
Square is piloting real-time bitcoin payments at Bitcoin 2025, letting people scan and spend crypto for T-shirts, hoodies, and hats
LAS VEGAS — Jack Dorsey's latest bitcoin vision is hitting the checkout counter — starting with a merch truck parked just off the casino floor inside The Venetian.
This week at Bitcoin 2025, Square is piloting real-time bitcoin payments, letting attendees scan and spend crypto for T-shirts, hoodies, and hats at the BTC Inc. pop-up store. The system runs on Lightning, which settles transactions off the main blockchain and is faster and cheaper than traditional processing methods.
When customers scan the QR code at checkout, Square handles things behind the scenes, including real-time exchange rates and confirmation.
The Tuesday launch marks the public debut of Block's most ambitious move yet to make bitcoin "everyday money" — a pilot that's expected to expand from the Vegas Strip to millions of merchants around the world.
Behind it all is Miles Suter, a longtime product leader at Block, who flew in early to oversee setup with his team.
Miles Suter, Bitcoin Product Lead at Block, helped oversee setup of the new Square bitcoin checkout — a pilot he calls a “significant milestone” in making bitcoin more accessible and usable.Miles SuterSuter joined the company in 2017, when Cash App's bitcoin integration was still a hackweek experiment.
"They needed someone with deep familiarity with bitcoin and the community," he said, calling himself "an early evangelist."
Eight years later, he's helping "connect the Blocks" — working across Cash App, Spiral, Bitkey, and Square to embed bitcoin into every layer of the company's ecosystem. The Square rollout, he says, is a natural next step.
Block expects to begin offering bitcoin payments to eligible Square sellers later this year, with full availability targeted for 2026, pending regulatory approval.
The launch comes as bitcoin trades near all-time highs, a surge driven largely by the "digital gold" narrative that positions it as a long-term store of value rather than a day-to-day medium of exchange.
At the same time, stablecoin legislation is advancing in Congress, and more fintech giants are aligning behind tokenized dollars.
Block is taking a different path — one that centers on bitcoin.
Suter said the company's strategy is rooted in the belief that a decentralized, permissionless currency remains critical to the future of the internet — and that bitcoin is still the best candidate to fill that role.
Asked about the lingering perception that bitcoin is better suited for holding than spending, Suter pointed to a familiar pattern. When Cash App first introduced bitcoin trading, he said, it was met with hesitation and doubt.
"But again, somebody's got to be first," he said. "And we feel like we have the right DNA to push things forward."
Inside The Venetian, Block is testing real-time bitcoin payments at the BTC Inc. pop-up store — the company’s boldest move yet to bring the digital asset to everyday retail.Miles SuterHe called the new Square rollout "a really significant milestone" in Block's broader mission to make bitcoin more accessible and usable.
The product builds on Square's "Bitcoin Conversions" tool, launched last year, which lets merchants automatically convert a portion of their daily sales into bitcoin. Block says it has rolled out the feature to more than 1,000 sellers so far — and those who opted in have seen their bitcoin holdings grow by roughly 70% over the past year.
This latest feature goes a step further, enabling sellers to accept bitcoin directly at the point of sale.
For businesses that don't want to hold bitcoin, there's no exposure risk. Payments can be instantly converted to dollars.
"If you just want to have it as another payment method — like Amex, MasterCard, or Visa — bitcoin is now potentially another option for you," Suter said.
For those that do want to hold it, Block is building out what Suter calls a "Bitcoin for Business" stack — a full suite of tools to accept, convert, manage, and self-custody bitcoin.
"If you do want to accept it as bitcoin," he said, "we give you a full suite of products to manage that as you see fit. That means being able to convert your daily sales, buy and sell from your U.S. dollar balance into bitcoin, and withdraw to self-custody at any time. It's about giving our merchants more options and making sure they never miss a sale."
Jack Dorsey’s Block is piloting bitcoin payments at Bitcoin 2025, turning a merch truck into a live Lightning-enabled checkout experience.Miles SuterThe announcement comes amid renewed attention on corporate bitcoin strategy, as some publicly traded firms adopt the cryptocurrency as a treasury reserve asset. But Block is targeting a different segment of the market.
"There's a lot of talk about corporate bitcoin right now," Suter said. "But like we did on Cash App — which is very much about the little guy and bringing accessibility to everyone — we want small and medium-sized merchants to also be able to get the benefits of bitcoin."
While Block hasn't released specific metrics yet, Suter said merchants who participated in the Bitcoin Conversions pilot have all profited. "Every single seller is in the money and has made money based on converting a certain percentage of their daily sales," he said.
Square's bitcoin push joins a broader ecosystem at Block that includes Bitkey, its self-custody wallet; Proto, a line of bitcoin mining hardware and software; Spiral, its open-source development arm; and Cash App's bitcoin trading functionality.
"We're focused on making bitcoin everyday currency," Suter said. "We believe that the internet needs a native currency, and that's where all our focus has been today."
This story originally appeared on: CNBC - Author:MacKenzie Sigalos
