Jack Dorsey has said that his payments company, Square, is considering making a hardware wallet for bitcoin. The non-custodial nature of the proposed hardware wallet would mean that users are the only ones who control their private key but if the wallet gets lost the funds would be irrecoverable. The eventual launch of such a product from a reputable company like Square would help to increase people’s trust in bitcoin.
According to Reuters, Dorsey told the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami that Square is not looking to compete with other hardware wallets already on the market, instead, he wants to build a product that will make the next 100 million people feeling comfortable using bitcoin.
Square is considering making a hardware wallet for #bitcoin. If we do it, we would build it entirely in the open, from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community. We want to kick off this thinking the right way: by sharing some of our guiding principles.
— jack (@jack) June 4, 2021
Interestingly, Dorsey said that the bitcoin app doesn’t need to be owned by Square, nor should it need permission from Apple nor Google to be installed. To this end, Square plans to create a dedicated Twitter account for the project as well as an open-source GitHub repository where anyone can come along and fork the code to make their own product.
It’s still up for discussion whether this app will actually go ahead but the fact that Dorsey and Square are contemplating it is certainly a positive for the bitcoin community.