GoMining Is Starting to Challenge Square's Grip on Bitcoin Payments by Cutting Out the Fiat Conversion Step
GoMining's tokenized mining product now has more than 100,000 active NFT holders and over 2 exahashes per second of pooled hash rate. In Q2 2025 the company announced a merchant-facing settlement layer built on that mining liquidity. Block Inc. reported Bitcoin gross profit from Cash App fell roughly 17% year-over-year in Q1 2025, making the timing harder to dismiss.
The Thesis
GoMining is not simply entering Bitcoin payments as another wallet or exchange-adjacent product. The company is attempting to commoditize the mining infrastructure layer that Square and its parent Block Inc. have never touched. By routing block rewards directly into a merchant settlement pool, GoMining removes the conversion step where a miner or user sells BTC into fiat and then re-enters the payments stack. That conversion step is exactly where Block captures margin today.
If GoMining can sustain consistent daily BTC yield from its pooled hash rate, it has a structurally cheaper cost basis for funding merchant settlements than any platform that buys Bitcoin on the open market or routes through fiat intermediaries. That cost advantage, not brand recognition, is what makes the competitive threat credible.
Why It Matters
Four groups face real consequences if GoMining's payments layer gains traction.
Bitcoin miners holding block rewards currently deal with liquidity friction. Converting BTC to cover power costs, hardware loans, and operational expenses means repeated exposure to spot price at the moment of conversion. A native payments layer that lets miners spend or settle in BTC without converting removes that friction and reduces slippage risk.
Square merchants who receive Bitcoin settlements today are routed through fiat conversion intermediaries that Block operates or partners with. Each conversion step carries a spread. A mining-native competitor with a lower cost basis could undercut that spread and pull volume away from Block's settlement infrastructure.
Retail Bitcoin holders using GoMining's tokenized NFT mining product have until now been passive yield participants, receiving small daily BTC distributions from pooled hash power. A payments utility layer changes that product from a yield instrument into spending infrastructure, which is a meaningfully different value proposition and a more defensible user relationship.
Block Inc. shareholders have priced in a Bitcoin-native payments identity since the company rebranded from Square to Block in late 2021. A credible competitor attacking that specific narrative, at a moment when Cash App Bitcoin revenue is declining, puts pressure on the thesis underpinning Block's premium valuation relative to traditional payments processors.
What Changed
The immediate trigger was GoMining's Q2 2025 announcement of a Bitcoin payments infrastructure product framed explicitly as a merchant-facing settlement layer. The company's public positioning named BTC liquidity from its tokenized mining operations as the supply source for that settlement pool, making the competitive intent clear.
The timing was not accidental. Block reported Q1 2025 earnings in May 2025 showing Cash App Bitcoin gross profit at approximately $48 million, down from roughly $58 million in Q1 2024 per Block's investor relations filing. A 17% year-over-year decline in Bitcoin gross profit is not a rounding error. It signals that Block's grip on BTC payment flows is loosening before GoMining's product has had time to reach significant merchant volume.
GoMining also crossed 100,000 active NFT mining token holders in early 2025. That user base provides a captive audience to seed merchant payment volume without requiring a cold-start acquisition campaign against Block's established Cash App user base of tens of millions.
The Evidence
The financial picture at Block gives context to GoMining's timing. Bitcoin gross profit from Cash App reached approximately $48 million in Q1 2025, compared to roughly $58 million in Q1 2024, according to Block's investor relations filings published in May 2025. Full-year 2024 Bitcoin notional volume through Cash App was approximately $2.4 billion per Block's annual report. That is the addressable volume GoMining would need to start taking meaningful share from.
On the supply side, GoMining reported over 2 exahashes per second of pooled hash rate contributed by NFT token holders as of March 2025. The total Bitcoin network hash rate averaged approximately 140 EH/s through Q1 2025 per data from Blockchain.com and CoinWarz. GoMining's 2 EH/s represents roughly 1.4% of network hash rate, which at Q1 2025 difficulty levels generates a statistically consistent daily BTC yield. That yield, pooled and directed into a settlement reserve, is what GoMining has proposed using to fund merchant payouts.
The math matters because it determines whether the settlement pool can keep pace with merchant demand without requiring GoMining to buy BTC on the spot market, which would eliminate the structural cost advantage. At current difficulty and BTC price levels, 2 EH/s produces a modest but non-trivial daily BTC output. Whether that output scales fast enough to cover meaningful merchant volume is the central operational question the company has not yet answered publicly.
The case against this
GoMining's 2 EH/s is 1.4% of network hash rate. Block processed $2.4 billion in Bitcoin notional volume in 2024. Those two numbers are not in the same universe yet. Seeding a payments layer with mining rewards works at small scale. Scaling it to hundreds of millions in merchant settlement volume would require hash rate growth that far outpaces what tokenized NFT sales can realistically fund in the near term.
Block's Cash App has tens of millions of active users and years of compliance infrastructure across US money transmission licensing and international payment rails. GoMining would need to replicate that regulatory surface area in every market it enters, a process that costs real time and real money regardless of how elegant the mining-native settlement mechanic is.
The decline in Block's Cash App Bitcoin gross profit could reflect Bitcoin price volatility, seasonal user behavior, or macro conditions rather than competitive share loss. A one-quarter or even one-year revenue decline does not confirm that GoMining, or any specific competitor, is taking volume from Block.
NFT-based hash power products have faced questions about regulatory classification in several jurisdictions. If GoMining's token structure is reclassified as a security in a major market, the user base that seeds its payments liquidity faces disruption before the payments product matures.
What would change this thesis:
- GoMining publishes verifiable merchant settlement volume data showing consistent BTC throughput without spot market top-ups, confirming the mining-native model functions at payments scale rather than just in pilot conditions.
- Block Inc. reports a reversal in Cash App Bitcoin gross profit, returning to or exceeding Q1 2024 levels, which would suggest its decline was not structural and the competitive threat is less urgent than the Q1 2025 numbers imply.
- GoMining's NFT token structure receives an adverse regulatory ruling in the United States or European Union, which would constrain its ability to grow the user base that supplies the hash rate underpinning the entire payments model.
- A larger mining operation, such as a publicly listed miner with 5 to 10 EH/s of captive hash rate, launches a competing mining-native payments layer before GoMining establishes merchant relationships, reducing GoMining's first-mover window to near zero.
What to Watch Next
Block's Q2 and Q3 2025 earnings calls are the nearest signal. If Cash App Bitcoin gross profit continues to decline sequentially, it increases the probability that the drop reflects structural share loss rather than a transient pricing or volume anomaly. If it recovers, the urgency of the GoMining threat fades considerably for the near term.
GoMining's hash rate growth rate is the second variable. Moving from 2 EH/s to 5 EH/s or beyond would materially change the math on how much settlement volume the mining-native pool can support without spot purchases. Any public announcement of new NFT series sales or institutional hash rate partnerships should be read as a signal about whether the company is on a credible scaling path.
Regulatory developments around tokenized mining products in the US and EU will determine whether GoMining's user base can grow in its two largest potential markets. A comment letter from the SEC or a formal inquiry from any EU member state financial regulator would be an early warning that the token structure faces reclassification risk.
- Block Inc. Q1 2025 Earnings Release and Investor Relations Filing, May 2025 (investors.block.xyz)
- Block Inc. 2024 Annual Report, Bitcoin notional volume figure (investors.block.xyz)
- Blockchain.com Hash Rate Chart, Bitcoin network average Q1 2025 (blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate, checked June 2026)
- CoinWarz Bitcoin Hash Rate Chart, Q1 2025 average confirmation (coinwarz.com, checked June 2026)
- GoMining public announcements on hash rate and NFT holder count, Q1 and Q2 2025 (company press releases)
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