On November 8, 2024, Block, Inc. announced a strategic pivot towards its bitcoin mining hardware business, following Donald Trump's presidential win, which may create a more favorable environment for crypto mining in the U.S.
The company plans to reallocate resources from its investments in TIDAL, which it acquired for approximately $300 million, and is discontinuing its 'Web5' initiative, TBD. This shift aims to enhance its Proto bitcoin mining initiative, which is said to have a strong product market fit and healthy demand pipeline.
The backdrop of this decision includes challenges faced by the mining sector post-halving, which reduced mining rewards to 3.125 BTC. Block's recent Q3 2024 results showed a gross profit increase of 19% to $2.25 billion year-on-year, with operating income at $323 million.
Block is also developing proprietary mining hardware, including a 3-nanometer mining chip designed to compete with Bitmain's BM1600 chip, which dominates the market with a 21.3% share of the Bitcoin network's hash rate.