Jack Dorsey's Square rebrands its name to Block

Yahoo Finance Live anchors examine Square's decision to change its name to Block in a nod to Jack Dorsey's intentions to expand the company into blockchain ventures.

Video Transcript

BRIAN CHEUNG: We want to shift right now to some other news right now regarding an interesting rebrand. Of course, we might be tired of rebrands already, but let's talk about Square, Jack Dorsey's other company. They changed their name to Block in a nod to some of their new businesses. Keep in mind, they have an ecosystem of other businesses like Cash App, Spiral, TIDAL. There's a project called TBD 54566975 because, of course, why not?

You can see shares not really doing too much there, but again, the rebrand is going to be pretty significant with regards to their pivot towards more crypto-related businesses. So, let's bring in our other esteemed co-anchors here to talk a little bit more about this. And Julie, I know you have some thoughts about just the broad effort in the tech space to keep changing their names.

JULIE HYMAN: Right, I mean, we have to distinguish between this rebranding and the Facebook rebranding, for example, because Facebook is renaming itself Meta. It is changing its ticker to META. It still will have Facebook as its main brand, right? In this case, Block is not going to be the brand that most consumers are still going to be interacting with. And they don't seem to be changing their ticker or anything like that either. Square will still be the company that most consumers-- it will be the brand most known by consumers.

But what this really does is reconfirm what we know is Jack Dorsey's intense interest in all things crypto and all things blockchain. And you could argue, I think relatively easily, that he has been much more successful on the Square/Block front than he has been on the Twitter front, and also in terms of integrating crypto into Square's business model, in part because it makes more sense for that kind of a company to be doing that kind of a thing.

But it is interesting, especially on the heels of Facebook and Meta, it feels like it's sort of a strike while the iron is hot in terms of people rethinking what they want their companies to be.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, my hot take is very simple. It's lame, and I really hate it. But I understand why they're doing it here. And really, it signals that the next decade for Square will be a lot different, that they're going to likely go out there and make acquisitions and go in a different direction. And by extension, the fundamentals of the business will change as a result of that, not unlike what we're seeing from Meta. Again, another-- a tech pioneer, of course, that, over the next decade, is going into a new arena, and I think signaling to investors that they're going to be trying new things, investing in new areas. And their fundamentals of their business will change as well.

JULIE HYMAN: I think one tiny-- I think I would have gone Cube, perhaps, rather than Block.

BRIAN SOZZI: I like Cube.

JULIE HYMAN: Maybe a little nod to the Tungsten cubes that have become popular amongst crypto aficionados. I don't hate it, though. I got to say, like Square, Block, it's kind of in the same family. I don't have such a big problem.

BRIAN CHEUNG: I think it's kind of neat, the idea, you know, they were Square, but now they're becoming multi-dimensional, so now they're a block, or a cube would have been appropriate. But it makes me wonder, like, what would happen if they tried to make the jump to 4D, right, the XYZ plane or whatever the next plane might be, into the fourth dimension.

BRIAN SOZZI: Julie, I thought you'd be with me on this one.

JULIE HYMAN: All right, Sozz.

BRIAN CHEUNG: All right.