Block's Cash App will stop supporting Bitcoin's free P2P transfer function in December

Odaily Planet Daily News: After months of investigation by the US federal government into Block's compliance behavior, Cash App has decided to terminate its Bitcoin transfer function through user tags, which has raised concerns among users about the app's ability to handle risks. The Cash App announced in a notice on its help page that it will no longer support sending and receiving Bitcoin between cashtags starting from December 20, 2024. The company pointed out that users can still use the Lightning Network or the Bitcoin blockchain to send and receive Bitcoin. The inspection of Wayback Machine in October showed no such notification. In addition, this change seems to only affect Bitcoin transfers and does not seem to affect other services, such as sending stocks or cash through unique identifier 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 most commonly use and value on the Cash App The Cash App (formerly Square Cash) was launched as part of Block Inc. in 2013, initially as a peer-to-peer payment system similar to PayPal's Venmo. Afterwards, it has expanded into a super application with features such as Bitcoin and stock purchases, savings, loans, and even prepaid Visa debit cards issued by Sutton Bank. It is currently unclear about the usage of Bitcoin P2P transfers on the Cash App, as the platform has not disclosed this data. However, regulatory documents show that the cryptocurrency business has brought profits to the company, with Cash App generating over $65 million in Bitcoin gross profit in the fourth quarter of 2023, a 90% increase from the fourth quarter of 2022. In the first few months of 2023, the Cash App generated over $10.3 billion in net revenue, accounting for approximately 65% of Block's net revenue at that time. As of December 2023, the application has 56 million active accounts, but it is currently unclear how many of them are using encryption services. （crypto.news）