As PayPal is rumored to join the crypto game, what will it mean for the industry and the price of Bitcoin and Ether?
Earlier this month, global payments giant PayPal was rumored to be considering listing crypto assets on its platform, which is estimated to have around 325 million active accounts worldwide.
The company is currently hiring crypto and blockchain specialists, meaning that its potential arrival could be more than a wild guess. But what does PayPal’s apparent interest in crypto mean for the industry, and how well does it align with the company’s principles?
Two steps forward, one step back
PayPal started to take baby steps toward crypto back in 2013. At the time, David Marcus, then-president of the payments company and now leading the Facebook-backed digital wallet Novi, told Bloomberg that “it’s just a question of whether Bitcoin will make its way to PayPal’s funding instrument or not.”
Several months later, John Donahoe, CEO at Ebay — PayPal’s parent company at the time — essentially confirmed that the payments platform will have to integrate Bitcoin (BTC) one day in order to keep up with the changing financial landscape. Following bullish remarks from its executives, PayPal partnered with three payment processors in the space in September 2014: BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin. But PayPal merely tapped some third parties to handle Bitcoin transactions, and did not integrate Bitcoin into its digital wallet or offer to obtain crypto directly via its website.
