Block Selected for the S&P 500 Index: The Intersection of Wall Street Capital and Bitcoin

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

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

Block's trillion dollar market

To understand the leverage effect of Block, one must first view the S&P 500 as a "protocol" for capital allocation rather than just a simple list of stocks. The rules of this "protocol" are extremely simple: all index funds that track it have the sole mission of precisely replicating the components and weights of the index. They have no room for subjective judgment, as any deviation means a failure to track.

The way Block obtains this "protocol" ticket is precisely through passing its most stringent profitability review—companies must have achieved profitability in both the most recent quarter and the entire past year of financial reports. This ticket represents the highest endorsement from the traditional financial system for the feasibility of a "Bitcoin-friendly" business strategy.

Looking back at the history of the S&P 500, it is essentially an evolutionary history of being forced to absorb emerging industries and recognize new business models. In 2006, Google (Alphabet) was included, forcing funds to buy into a company whose core assets are intangible algorithms and user data. The inclusion of Meta (formerly Facebook) in 2013 marked the official digestion of Web 2.0 concepts such as "social graph" by Wall Street's capital machine. The inclusion of Tesla in 2020 triggered a tsunami of passive buying exceeding $80 billion.

In contrast, when funds are forced to buy Block today, they not only acquire equity in a payment company but also gain direct risk exposure to the 8,363 Bitcoins on its balance sheet. This change immediately triggered a mechanical and irreversible capital flow. With Block's market capitalization of about $50 billion and an estimated weight of about 0.1% in the index, this inclusion will trigger over $10 billion in "passive buying" in the short term.

Interestingly, most of this funding comes from pension funds and sovereign wealth funds that previously would not actively touch crypto assets. This mechanical inflow of capital has bypassed the psychological barriers that traditional investors have towards crypto assets.

Block's Bitcoin strategy

Block's embrace of Bitcoin began at the product level. In 2018, its Cash App started supporting Bitcoin transactions, allowing millions of ordinary Americans to easily buy Bitcoin for the first time, just like buying stocks. This decision was quite controversial at the time, but the company's founder saw it as an extension of financial inclusion.

In October 2020, Block suddenly announced that it had used company funds to purchase 4,709 Bitcoins, with an investment amount of $50 million. In February 2021, it spent another $170 million to acquire 3,318 Bitcoins. The total investment for the two acquisitions amounted to $220 million, and it holds 8,027 Bitcoins. The market began to realize that this was not a fleeting financial operation, but an expression of faith.

After 2023, the Bitcoin strategy will further deepen. Block has launched the "Bitcoin Blueprint" plan, announcing that 10% of the monthly gross profit from its Bitcoin-related businesses will be used to purchase Bitcoin. This means that Bitcoin is no longer a static investment but a dynamic engine deeply tied to the company's business growth.

Moreover, Block has launched an infrastructure building movement around Bitcoin. Cash App integrates the Lightning Network, making small Bitcoin payments simple; the TBD department focuses on developing decentralized protocols, attempting to build a financial infrastructure that does not rely on any centralized entity; open-source hardware wallet projects enable ordinary users to truly control their Bitcoin; and even investing in mining chips, trying to make the Bitcoin network more decentralized.

The business structure and vision of Block

Block's business structure clearly serves its vision. Square and Cash App are the revenue engines, providing payment and financial services to millions of merchants, and have accumulated a large and loyal user base.

These profits and users are continuously funneled into the future departments within Block: Spiral and TBD focus on building the underlying infrastructure for Bitcoin, developing technologies like the Lightning Development Kit (LDK) and Decentralized Identity (DID); the Bitkey wallet is dedicated to solving the challenges of Bitcoin self-custody; the Proto department is researching and developing an open-source Bitcoin mining system.

This is not a one-sided act of burning money, as the Bitcoin business itself is a powerful engine for user and revenue growth. During the peak of the bull market, Bitcoin trading alone generated $10.02 billion in revenue for Cash App, accounting for as much as 81.5%.

Potential Risks and Challenges

The grand narrative behind blockchain also hides hidden worries. First, its technological dependence is a primary risk. The deep binding to the Bitcoin protocol means that any black swan event at the protocol level could have devastating effects. Secondly, execution risks should not be underestimated. Projects like TBD, Proto, and Bitkey have high technical barriers, and their commercialization prospects remain shrouded in fog.

At the same time, Block's financial performance has also drawn attention. Revenue growth has slowed, and operating profit margins are below the average level of the S&P 500. Analysts believe that the company needs to translate its vision of "Bitcoin is the future" into tangible returns for shareholders.

Conclusion

In the world of cryptocurrency, Block represents a possibility: not through confrontation, but through construction and integration, pushing Bitcoin from the margins to the center. This "Trojan horse" style of infiltration may be more effective than any radical revolution.

However, as trillions of dollars in passive funds are "forced" to embrace Bitcoin, a key question arises: Is this the beginning of Bitcoin's conquest of Wall Street, or the prelude to Wall Street taming Bitcoin? Perhaps only time can provide the answer.