The person who was killed in San Francisco dedicated his life to cryptocurrency payments

*Written by: Jaleel, * Rhythm BlockBeats

Edited by: Jack

At 2:35 AM on April 4, a stabbing incident occurred near 300 Soma Street in San Francisco. According to the San Francisco Police Department, the victim was taken to the hospital for emergency treatment but succumbed to their injuries. Nearby neighbors described the crime scene on Tuesday morning: "It looked very sticky; I took my dog out at 11 AM and saw blood all over the building."

Soon after, reports emerged that the stabbing victim was Bob Lee, the former Chief Technology Officer of Block (formerly Square) and creator of Cash App, who was currently the CTO of MobileCoin. Following the news, many sought confirmation from MobileCoin and Block. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and current CEO of Block, could not believe the rumor and hurriedly called to confirm, only to receive the heartbreaking news of Bob Lee's death, which he later confirmed in a post on the decentralized social protocol Nostr.

Friends of Bob Lee stated in various news interviews that he valued his children and career highly and had no enemies or foes. They believed that even if someone attempted to rob him, Bob Lee would hand over anything of value to avoid violence. The San Francisco police have not yet released any details about suspects, and no arrests have been made, stating that the investigation is still ongoing.

After confirming Bob Lee's death, Garry Tan, CEO of the renowned American startup incubator YCombinator, called it a "huge loss for the tech community and San Francisco." Elon Musk also commented on the tragedy on Twitter: "I’m very sad to hear this." He also questioned whether the city of San Francisco would take stronger measures to prevent violent crime.

Many, including San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and the Mayor of San Francisco, paid tribute to him following his passing. MobileCoin CEO Joshua Goldbard stated: "Bob was a generator, a natural force; he helped our world give birth to Android and CashApp. Moby was his dream: to be the privacy wallet of the 21st century. I will miss him every day." BlockBeats also used this article to reflect on the contributions of Cash App and Bob Lee's life in tribute.

Major Events of Cash App

Bob Lee is best known as the first CTO of Square and the creator of Cash App (formerly Square Cash). According to the latest data from Similarweb, Cash App had total visits of 165 million, 205 million, and 220 million in the last three months, with 88.18% of users coming from the United States. Additionally, Block's financial report indicated that Cash App generated up to $10.01 billion in Bitcoin revenue and $218 million in Bitcoin gross profit for the entire year of 2021.

Cash App, formerly known as Square Cash, is a mobile payment service developed by Square that allows users to transfer funds using a mobile application. As of February 18, 2018, Cash App had over 7 million active users. In March 2015, Square introduced Square Cash for businesses, allowing individuals, organizations, and business owners to send and receive money using a unique username, known as a $cashtag. Since January 2018, Cash App has supported Bitcoin transactions.

In 2019, Square heavily invested in Bitcoin, generating $65.5 million in revenue from Bitcoin in the first quarter of 2019. Square CEO Jack Dorsey expressed his support for Bitcoin, stating that it is the best currency to become the global currency of the internet.

At the same time, Cash App began rolling out Bitcoin deposit services and gradually integrated third-party wallets, allowing users to sell Bitcoin and deposit the proceeds into their bank accounts or debit cards.

In 2021, Cash App announced its third-quarter financial report, generating up to $1.82 billion in Bitcoin revenue and $42 million in gross profit, representing year-over-year growth of 115% and 29%, respectively. The next step was to establish a decentralized Bitcoin trading platform, with Square stating that the company does not intend to offer trading services for cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.

Bob Lee's Life and Contributions

Bob Lee was a tech giant with extensive experience in mobile application development and dependency injection. Before founding Cash App, he held technical positions at Google, Sun Microsystems, and Square. Bob Lee's father mourned his son on Facebook, stating that Bob worked harder than anyone else and was the smartest person he knew.

During his time at Google as a software engineer, Bob Lee helped develop the Android operating system and co-authored the dependency injection framework Guice with Kevin Bourrillion in 2006. In 2010, he joined Square as Chief Technology Officer and led the company's Android application development. During this time, he created Cash App and continued to invest in a series of tech startups. Bob Lee later joined the cryptocurrency payment company MobileCoin as its Chief Product Officer. He was an early investor and advisor for the company, helping to shape its product and technology strategy and overseeing the development of the MobileCoin product portfolio.

Bob Lee was an outstanding software engineer and entrepreneur. His passion for software engineering and enthusiasm for technology made him a highly talented engineer, and his work and contributions had a profound impact on the entire industry.

From Google to Square

Bob Lee was born on December 20, 1979, in St. Louis, Missouri. During his time at Lindbergh High School, he developed a keen interest in programming, even creating a 3D rendering engine in Turbo Pascal, earning him the nickname "Crazy Bob" among friends.

In July 2001, Bob Lee joined Ajilon, where he wrote a program for Microsoft IIS to protect servers from the rapidly spreading computer worm known as Code Red. In 2003, Bob Lee was hired by AT&T as a technical architect, during which he developed the aspect-oriented programming (AOP) framework dynaop, similar to the Spring framework for Java featured in Oracle Magazine. Dynaop was the driving force behind JavaServer Faces (JSF) migrating from AOP.

From October 2004 to January 2010, Bob Lee was employed at Google as a software engineer, where he made significant contributions to the development of the Android mobile operating system, one of the world's most widely used operating systems. Without Bob Lee, the birth of Android could have been delayed by a decade. While at Google, Bob Lee co-authored the dependency injection framework Guice with Kevin Bourrillion to modularize AdWords, for which they received the Jolt Award.

In May 2009, Bob Lee, along with Rod Johnson, created a Java dependency injection proposal and was a member of the Java Proposal Expert Group, which added lambda expressions and another proposal for adding concurrency to the language. Additionally, Lee contributed to the Android process virtual machine Dalvik. Bob had extensive experience building digital and physical products for a mobile-first world. He is best known as the first CTO of Square and the creator of Cash App (formerly Square Cash).

In January 2010, Square recruited Bob Lee, officially making him the company's Chief Technology Officer, where he led the core library development for Android in its early years. After becoming CTO, Bob Lee moved from his home in St. Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco. In 2013, Bob Lee was responsible for developing Cash App and Square Cash.

As a highly popular mobile payment application, Cash App provides users with a simple, fast, secure, and convenient way to make payments, making it an important part of the modern financial market. As the founder of Cash App, Bob Lee achieved great success by creating innovative solutions in the mobile payment market, and his inspiration and innovation have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of modern payments.

From Square to MobileCoin

In 2014, Bob Lee left Square and invested in several tech startups as a startup advisor and angel investor, including SpaceX, Clubhouse, Tile, Figma, Faire, Orchid, Addressable, Nana, Ticket Fairy, Gowalla, Asha, SiPhox, Netswitch, and Found. In 2021, Bob Lee joined the cryptocurrency payment company MobileCoin as its Chief Product Officer.

MobileCoin was founded in 2017 and developed a cryptocurrency and digital payment system designed to facilitate secure, instant transactions on mobile devices. As an early investor and advisor for MobileCoin, Bob Lee helped shape its product and technology strategy and oversaw the development of the MobileCoin product portfolio. Bob Lee's experience and technical expertise made him a strong supporter of the MobileCoin team. His experience in mobile application development and dependency injection contributed to the product and technology development of MobileCoin.

Subsequently, MobileCoin raised $107 million at a valuation of $1 billion, including a $30 million investment led by Binance Labs in 2018. Signal also launched support for MobileCoin, allowing its users (currently only in the UK) to pay for services or products using MobileCoin.

Those close to Bob Lee say that no one could dislike him; he never looked down on anyone and adhered to a strict philosophy of non-judgment. Bob Lee criticized the traditional financial system for leaving hundreds of millions of "unbanked" people worldwide, excluding them from relevant benefits. He stated that MobileCoin corrected this injustice through its novel blockchain technology.

"Just as encrypted messengers support freedom of speech, MobileCoin supports free commerce. As the security of financial data becomes more important than ever, it is our responsibility to develop end-to-end encrypted payment technology," Bob Lee once said. Under Bob Lee's influence, in today's world where people seek alternatives to physical cash and embrace cryptocurrency, MobileCoin focuses on enabling anyone around the world to transact easily, quickly, and affordably on a payment platform that prioritizes user, data, and environmental security.

Bob Lee's friend Dalton mentioned that Bob Lee had moved back to Miami and participated in the MobileCoin business summit held last week. They had dinner together the previous Saturday, and Dalton noted that Bob Lee was in high spirits about the development of MobileCoin.

In addition to being an innovative and dedicated entrepreneur, Bob Lee was also an active participant and supporter of the open-source community. He contributed to several open-source projects, including Google Guice, Apache Struts, and Apache Groovy. His work not only brought significant contributions to the open-source community but also enabled more developers to utilize these excellent open-source tools, thereby improving the efficiency and quality of software development.

During his tenure as CTO of Square and while founding Cash App, Sibble was Bob Lee's neighbor, and they spent a lot of time together. "Bob Lee was smart, touched many lives, and helped many different startups," Sibble said. Bob Lee was a highly talented and influential software engineer, entrepreneur, and community activist, and his work and contributions had a profound impact on the entire industry. His passing is a great loss, but his spirit and contributions will inspire the next generation to continue their commitment to the development of open-source technology, software engineering, and the cryptocurrency financial market.