Square Crypto, the crypto initiative of payments company Square, has onboarded Blockstream co-founder and bitcoin developer Matt Corallo.
As officially announced on Twitter, the big-time hire will “play a vital role at [Square Crypto], as much as he did at [Chaincode Labs], providing valuable experience of Bitcoin engineering within the team and broader ecosystem of new devs.”
BIG NEWS: Please welcome @TheBlueMatt to Square Crypto. Woo! THINGS ARE HEATING UP EVERYBODY GET IN HERE LET’S PARTY ????????????????????????
— Square Crypto (@sqcrypto) August 20, 2019
*A lone figure watches from afar, their haunched shape a dark smudge against the gathering gray sky… Gary?*
According to the company, Corallo’s background is “the best imaginable foundation for our goal of accelerating bitcoin adoption on a massive scale.” It further enumerated the projects Corallo has worked on, including Core, Bitcoinj, FIBRE, BetterHash, Rust-Lightning, and other open-source initiatives like Signal. He also previously served at Bitcoin development company Chaincode Labs as a Bitcoin Open Source Developer.
In response to the announcement, Corallo, who will be joining Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s company in the coming weeks, expressed his excitement.
“So excited to be joining the @sqcrypto team over the coming weeks. Experimenting with different models to accelerate Bitcoin OSS is awesome!”
So excited to be joining the @sqcrypto team over the coming weeks. Experimenting with different models to accelerate Bitcoin OSS is awesome!
— Matt Corallo (@TheBlueMatt) August 20, 2019
Gonna miss the @ChaincodeLabs folks, but given they host anyone who works on Bitcoin OSS, I'll probably be there every other day anyway. https://t.co/L00gqV1LLD
In an interview with CoinDesk, Corallo said that he aims to work with “a team that crosses the entire range of talent and type of experience.”
“It’s a little bit different than Chaincode or Blockstream research. To work together on projects with a tightly knit team that are a little bit more focused. Hopefully take on bigger problems, and problems that cross more talent bases,” he said.
The latest hire follows after the firm’s project manager Steve Lee said that Square Crypto is focused on bitcoin and not its specific products. Although it appears that most participants think that Square Crypto was made to enhance crypto users’ experience, Lee underscored that the team is not focused on improving the Cash App’s functionality. He further described the payments service company as “an open-source initiative” that is meant to support the bitcoin ecosystem.
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