Bitcoin Conference Draws Cryptocurrency Fans To Miami

Jack Dorsey at a bitcoin conference in 2021 (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

bit harsh?

Block spent ~$68 million on an event for employees last quarter, as the stock gets crushed in early trading

Jack Dorsey, Block Head, is hoping that bitcoin can invigorate growth at the fintech company in two ways: selling bitcoin mining rigs, and enabling merchants to accept the OG cryptocurrency.

David Crowther

11/7/25 5:54AM

Fintech giant Block, Inc. — formerly known as Square — is getting crushed in early trading on Friday as investors digest the company’s latest set of results, with the stock down more than 14% as of 5:42 a.m. ET.

At the headline level, they make for tough reading. Revenue missed Bloomberg-compiled consensus estimates by 3.5%, which, coupled with higher general and administrative expenses, translated into a 19% miss on adjusted earnings per share.

The two most important businesses for Block continued to show solid trends, with Cash App — its peer-to-peer payments platform — seeing gross profit growth reaccelerate to 24%, while Square eked out a steadier 9%. But expectations into the release were likely elevated, with Block’s shares ripping 48% higher in the six months prior to the print.

The event of the year?

One particular wrinkle in the company’s shareholder letter deserves some attention. According to the filing, the company said (emphasis ours):

“General and administrative expenses were up 14% year over year on a GAAP basis, driven in part by an in-person company event. Excluding this expense, general and administrative expenses remained roughly flat year over year in the third quarter.”

Indeed, the company reported G&A costs of $543.9 million for the third quarter. That was a 14% rise on last year, as stated above. Last year’s G&A expense was $475.8 million, meaning that most of the $68 million rise in G&A expenses was because of an in-person company event.

$68 million is one hell of an event — it shakes out to about $6,000 a head (Block reported 11,372 employees at the end of last year).

Though a $68 million expense is hardly the end of the world for a company with a market cap north of $40 billion, it is potentially weighing on investor sentiment, with analysts at FT Partners, led by Zachary Gunn, writing in their post-earnings reaction note:

“There’s been significant reaction to the G&A miss, driven in part by an ‘in-person company event’, with investors commenting that it’s hard to take a company seriously regarding reaching bottom-line targets when it’s spending ~$70mm on a large-scale event for employees.”

They go on to add, however, that “if you can get over that, trends for the quarter were fairly good.”

And there are other reasons to be optimistic about Block’s future fortunes, with the company’s leadership continuing to be evangelical about bitcoin. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter in his earlier career, discussed Proto, the company’s new bitcoin mining rig business:

“In Proto, our Bitcoin mining business, we generated our first revenue, seeding what has the potential to become our next major ecosystem. We monetized Proto’s innovation in hardware and software to hardware sales across ASICs, mining hashboards, and full mining rigs that provide many of the key advanced components to mine Bitcoin. In the third quarter, we sold our first rigs to our first customer, and while it’s only a modest contributor to the second half of this year, we are actively pursuing a robust pipeline for 2026 and beyond.”

Square is also about to launch bitcoin payments for its merchants, with Dorsey stating that sellers will be able to make the switch easily in settings and be able to begin accepting bitcoin as payment from next week. The challenge, per Dorsey, will be more psychological than technological — getting people “comfortable” with paying with bitcoin.

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Nate Becker & Matt Phillips11h

Oil drops, yields fall, and stocks rise on reports the US has sent Iran a plan to end war

Oil, stock, and bond markets flipped as investors continued to digest the latest reports on a potential wind-down of the war in Iran, with The New York Times reporting that the US has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the conflict.

Crude oil futures dropped sharply, from around $92 a barrel to about $88.50. Yields on two-year and 10-year Treasurys dropped, and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF shot up after-hours.

From the Times:

“The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout.

It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal.

But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries.”

Some individual shares had outsized reactions to the news in the postmarket session. Gold miners Freeport-McMoRan and Newmont, which have been battered since the war started, rose. Ammonia maker CF Industries — which had risen on expectations of rising prices for fertilizer products linked to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — fell.

US natural gas producers such as APA Corporation, EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Diamondback Energy also declined after-hours.

The Times report also said that “for now, there is no indication that the war will let up imminently.”

United States Said to Have Sent Iran a Plan to End the Middle East War

Crude oil futures dropped sharply, from around $92 a barrel to about $88.50. Yields on two-year and 10-year Treasurys dropped, and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF shot up after-hours.

From the Times:

“The United States has sent Iran a 15-point plan to end the war in the Middle East, according to two officials briefed on the diplomacy, reflecting the Trump administration’s eagerness to find an offramp from the conflict as it grapples with its economic fallout.

It was unclear how widely the plan, delivered by way of Pakistan, had been shared among Iranian officials and whether Iran was likely to accept it as a basis for negotiations. Nor was it clear whether Israel, which has been bombing Iran together with the United States, was on board with the proposal.

But the delivery of the plan showed that the administration was ramping up efforts to conclude a war, now in its fourth week, that has drawn in several other countries.”

US natural gas producers such as APA Corporation, EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Diamondback Energy also declined after-hours.

The Times report also said that “for now, there is no indication that the war will let up imminently.”

GameStop seesaws on Q4 results

The video game and collectibles retailer just reported Q4 results.

Luke Kawa, Max Knoblauch12h

Tasha Matsumoto

13h

Stocks close lower after fluctuating as traders digest war updates

Stocks pared steeper losses on hopes of US-Iran talks, but were unable to maintain gains on reports that the US is deploying 3,000 troops to the Middle East.

Matt Phillips14h

Amid Mideast conflict, investors cling to faith in the AI build-out

Data center build-out stocks showed impressive resilience to the slump that hit big indexes Tuesday.

In fact, construction companies, server system makers, fiber-optic technology stocks, and memory makers — all cornerstones of the AI trade — were having a pretty good day, suggesting the market sees the wave of AI construction continuing, war or no war.

Optical stocks seen as crucial to efficiently transmitting the flood of information AI data centers both produce and depend on were surging. Corning, Lumentum, Coherent, and Ciena Corp. ramped.

Server rack makers HP Enterprise and Dell jumped. Construction and engineering companies like Sterling Infrastructure, MasTec, and Comfort Systems USA, which have benefited from the growth in building data centers, posted solid gains.

Hard disk drive makers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital were also positive, though other memory plays such as Sandisk and Micron were in the red.

It was an impressive display of positivity on a day when the S&P 500 (SPDR S&P 500 ETF) and the Nasdaq 100 (Invesco QQQ Trust) were both fluttering between positive and negative territory for completely understandable reasons.

After all, the 82nd Airborne is heading to the Middle East, suggesting the US is considering sending troops into Iran. US crude oil is back above $90 a barrel and climbing, as the Strait of Hormuz remains essentially shut.

Additionally, the problems in the private credit market continue, with major fund managers preventing investors from withdrawing all the money they would like to. We even had a weak auction for US two-year Treasury notes — investors seemed to think the offered yield might not be sufficient to offset inflation risks stirred up by the war — that sent short-term interest rates up sharply.

But apparently it will take more than all that for investors to worry that the AI build-out may be halted, delayed, or even just trimmed back.

Nate Becker17h

Stocks get a bump on CNN report that Iran is willing to listen to proposals to end war

Stocks got a small bump midday Tuesday as CNN reported on what appeared to be a softening in Iran’s position toward ending the war in the Middle East.

The S&P 500 briefly turned green following the report, before paring some of those gains in the afternoon.

From the CNN report:

“An Iranian source told CNN on Tuesday that there had been ‘outreach’ between the United States and Tehran and that Iran is willing to listen to ‘sustainable’ proposals to end the war.

‘There has been outreach between the United States and Iran, initiated by Washington, in recent days, but nothing that has reached the level of full-on negotiations,’ the source said. ‘Messages have been received through various intermediaries to scope out whether an agreement to end the war can be reached.’”

Markets had zoomed Monday as President Trump said there had been discussions between the two nations, but they gave back some of their gains after Iran starkly denied the claim. Markets seemed to read this new reporting as a softening of Iran’s position.

Iranian source says there has been US "outreach" and Tehran "willing to listen"

“An Iranian source told CNN on Tuesday that there had been ‘outreach’ between the United States and Tehran and that Iran is willing to listen to ‘sustainable’ proposals to end the war.

‘There has been outreach between the United States and Iran, initiated by Washington, in recent days, but nothing that has reached the level of full-on negotiations,’ the source said. ‘Messages have been received through various intermediaries to scope out whether an agreement to end the war can be reached.’”

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