Paypal will enable its customers to buy, sell, or hold Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on its platform and use their crypto funds for shopping and payments, starting early in 2021, according to a confirmed report by Reuters.
Account holders in the US, which has one of the largest cryptocurrency user-bases, can use their Paypal Wallets in a few weeks to trade and hold cryptocurrencies. Paypal has also revealed plans to expand its services to Venmo digital wallet and into more countries in the first quarter of 2021.
The popular and regulatory compliant US-based payments company will open up a huge market for its over 300 million customers to use crypto payments for a total of 26 million merchants using the platform.
However, Paypal clarified that it will still settle payments in different fiat currencies supported on the network. Besides Bitcoin, PayPal will initially support three altcoins, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash.
Paypal Is Prepared To Go Full Crypto
Dan Schulman, PayPal’s President, and Chief Executive said that the company wants to encourage worldwide adoption of virtual coins and prepare the platform for the adoption of other forms of digital currencies like CBDCs, which are being developed by corporations and central banks.
“We are working with central banks and thinking of all forms of digital currencies and how Paypal can play a role.”
PayPal’s evident interest in cryptocurrencies started with Facebook’s Libra project but later withdrew from the Libra Association due to regulatory hurdles between Facebook and US financial Regulators and Congress.
Paypal will operate under a conditional cryptocurrency license, the Conditional BitLicense from New York’s financial regulatory Watchdog, New York State Department of Financial Services for the four top crypto assets.
The company announced plans to open its platform to crypto earlier through a partnership with New-York Based crypto startup Paxos Trust.
Crypto Community Reacts to PayPal’s Crypto Adoption
The highly anticipated decision has stirred support and speculation in the crypto space as the hype spiked Bitcoin price almost 5% following the announcement. Many analysts and top personalities in the crypto space have expressed bullish sentiments about Bitcoin and the overall crypto market.
Bitcoin is currently up 5.11% at $12,364 and climbing. The impressive gains bring back conversation about Bitcoin’s price pump to 13,000, according to a top BTC analyst Koroush AK.
However, there are some in the crypto community who feel that Paypal needs Bitcoin more and not the other way round. Crypto trader and Analysts Crypto Michael said:
“It is great that Paypal is accepting crypto payments, nut ehm, crypto, and #Bitcoin doesn’t need PayPal.”
