Cash App Creator Bob Lee Killed in San Francisco Stabbing

The tech executive was reportedly stabbed in the early hours of Tuesday in Rincon Hill, San Francisco

April 5, 2023 09:02 am

Cash App creator Bob Lee | Image from Joshua Goldbard, CEO at MobileCoin, modified by Blockworks

Bob Lee, a former chief technology officer of Square and founder of Cash App, has reportedly died after a stabbing in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Police Department announced Tuesday that a 43-year-old male suffering from stab wounds passed away, but officials didn’t name the victim. However, local media and the CEO of MobileCoin confirmed the news.

Lee was most recently the chief product officer of crypto company MobileCoin, where he supervised the firm’s entire product portfolio.

Newsletter

Subscribe to The Breakdown

Joshua Goldbard, MobileCoin’s CEO, sent the following statement to Blockworks: “Bob was a force of nature. Helped to birth Android and CashApp into our world. Moby was his dream: a privacy protecting wallet for the 21st Century. I will miss him every day.”

The news was confirmed by his friends and colleagues on Twitter, including Bill Barhydt, CEO at trading platform Abra, and Jack Dorsey, CEO at Square, who eulogized the tech executive.

“It’s real. Getting calls. Heartbreaking. Bob was instrumental to Square and Cash App. STL guy,” Dorsey wrote on decentralized social media platform Nostr.

Former Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Jake Shields, who says he was a friend, wrote on Twitter that Lee was in the “good” part of the city and appears to have been targeted in a mugging attack.

Loading Tweet..

No arrest has been made in the case as of press time, and the San Francisco police have not revealed further details on the suspect or motive.

“Officers rendered aid and summoned medics to the scene. The victim was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. Despite efforts by first responders and medical personnel, the victim succumbed to his injuries,” police said.

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.

Tags

Newsletter

The Breakdown

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Digital Asset Summit 2026

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 24 - 26, 2026

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

buy tickets learn more

recent research

Research

Solana DEX Winners: All About Order Flow

Solana's spot trading landscape will remain bifurcated: prop AMMs will own the short-tail of highly liquid pairs, while passive AMMs continue drifting toward the long-tail. Both can win via vertical integration, but in opposite directions: passive AMMs are moving closer to users through token issuance platforms (e.g., Pump-PumpSwap, MetaDAO-Futarchy AMM), while prop AMMs are moving down the stack into transaction landing services and infrastructure (e.g., HumidiFi-Nozomi). The venues most at risk are legacy AMMs with limited end-user control and no durable, launch-driven source of order flow.

by Carlos Gonzalez Campo