Block Selected for S&P 500: Bitcoin and Wall Street's New Era

In July 2025, Block Inc. was officially listed in the S&P 500 index, becoming one of the 500 most representative publicly traded companies in the United States. This fintech giant owns the payment giant Square and the mobile finance app Cash App, and its stock price subsequently rose by 14% within a few days.

Being selected for the S&P 500 means that Block will become a standard component of global mainstream investment portfolios. According to statistics, the scale of passive funds tracking the S&P 500 exceeds $5 trillion. Based on Block's weight in the index, it is estimated that over $10 billion of traditional capital will be indirectly allocated to Bitcoin through holding Block shares.

Unlocking the trillion-dollar market

The S&P 500 is essentially a "protocol" for capital allocation. The sole mission of the index funds tracking it is to accurately replicate the components and weights of the index, leaving no room for subjective judgment. Block has gained entry through rigorous profitability reviews, representing the highest endorsement from the traditional financial system for the viability of "Bitcoin-friendly" business strategies.

Looking back at the history of the S&P 500, it is essentially a history of forced absorption of emerging industries and the recognition of new business models.

• In 2006, Google (Alphabet) was selected, and the fund began to buy core assets, which are companies with intangible algorithms and user data.
• In 2013, Meta (formerly Facebook) was selected, and concepts like "social graph" and other Web2 ideas were digested by the Wall Street capital machine.
• In 2020, Tesla was selected, triggering a tsunami of passive buying exceeding $80 billion.

In contrast, when the funds were forced to buy Block today, they gained not only equity in a payment company but also a direct risk exposure to the 8,363 Bitcoins on its balance sheet. This triggered a mechanical and irreversible capital flow, mostly from pension and sovereign wealth funds that previously would not have actively touched crypto assets.

The selection of Block means that Wall Street is being forced to embrace decentralized non-sovereign currency assets for the first time under rule-driven conditions.

Block's Bitcoin Romance

The career of Block founder Jack Dorsey has always revolved around a core issue: breaking the constraints that centralized institutions impose on individual rights.

Square (the predecessor of Block) was born from the vision of enabling small merchants to accept credit card payments. However, Dorsey's experience with Twitter made him realize that the true foundation of decentralization lies not in benevolent "corporate charters", but in the cold "code protocols".

In the global financial protocol of Bitcoin, which is permissionless, censorship-resistant, and not owned by any single entity, Dorsey saw the ideals that Twitter failed to achieve.

Block's embrace of Bitcoin began at the product level. In 2018, Cash App supported Bitcoin transactions, allowing millions of ordinary Americans to easily purchase Bitcoin for the first time. In October 2020, Block suddenly announced it would use company funds to buy 4,709 Bitcoins. In February 2021, it made another move, investing a total of $220 million in two purchases, holding 8,027 Bitcoins.

After 2023, the Bitcoin strategy further deepens. Block launched the "Bitcoin Blueprint" plan, allocating 10% of the monthly gross profit from its Bitcoin-related businesses to purchase Bitcoin. This programmatic and predictable accumulation strategy sends a clear signal to the market: Block's commitment to Bitcoin is at an algorithmic level.

Block has also focused on infrastructure development around Bitcoin: the Cash App integrates the Lightning Network; the TBD department is developing decentralized protocols; an open-source hardware wallet project has been launched; and there is investment in mining chips.

For Dorsey, Block's inclusion in the S&P 500 is a means to achieve the ultimate vision — to use Wall Street's money to build a future that ultimately does not belong to Wall Street.

Business Structure of Block

Block's business structure clearly serves Dorsey's vision:

• Traditional business: Square and Cash App serve as the engine for generating revenue, providing a continuous cash flow and user base.
• Future Department:
  • Software Level: Spiral and TBD focus on building Bitcoin's underlying infrastructure.
  • Hardware level: Bitkey wallet is committed to solving the self-custody problem of Bitcoin; Proto department is developing an open-source Bitcoin mining system.

This forms a closed loop: investing profits from traditional financial services into Bitcoin infrastructure; then using the appeal of Bitcoin to attract new users, which in turn feeds back into the growth of traditional business.

Challenges Facing the Block

Behind the grand narrative of Block, there are also concerns:

1. Technical dependency risk: The deep binding to the Bitcoin protocol means that any black swan event at the protocol level could have a devastating impact.
2. Execution Risk: Multiple projects have high technical barriers and unclear commercialization prospects.
3. Financial Performance: Revenue growth has slowed, and operating profit margin is below the S&P 500 average.

Conclusion

Block represents a possibility: by building and integrating, pushing Bitcoin from the margins to the center. This "Trojan horse" type of infiltration may be more effective than any radical revolution.

However, when trillion-dollar passive funds are "forced" to embrace Bitcoin, one question is worth pondering: Is this the beginning of Bitcoin's conquest of Wall Street, or the prelude to Wall Street taming Bitcoin?