Is Paypal moving into Bitcoin
Is fintech behemoth Paypal moving into the Bitcoin and Crypto space? It would be big news should this actually happen as Paypal has 325 million users and is far more mainstream than what we currently have as on ramps into Bitcoin and Crypto projects.
It should be clearly understood that PayPal is currently available for withdrawals from exchanges, Coinbase being one of them, but this would be huge in terms of offering direct sales of crypto. The rumor mill is suggesting that Paypal are going to allow purchases and sales of crypto directly from PayPal and Venmo and offer a wallet solution.
There is a clear move within the fintech space to bolster revenues and stay ahead of the game by offering Crypto assets. Revolut, the London based fintech began offering crypto to its customer base after a 2017 tie-up with Bitstamp, raised half a billion dollars in February, valuing the platform at $5.5 billion. Robinhood, the fintech app thought to be fueling the recent retail boom in equities day trading, first began offering crypto in February 2018.
Paypal flirted with facebook last year and its Libra project but now the focus now is expanding its own payments expertise according to the rumor mill.
Paypal hiring Blockchain engineers
At the start of 2020, PayPal posted job openings for its new Blockchain Research Group. They posted eight engineering positions, four in San Jose and four in Singapore. Job postings got reporters at Cointelegraph digging around this story stating;
PayPal is hiring crypto and blockchain experts amid rumors that the global payment platform will enable direct cryptocurrency purchases for its 305 million users. The job descriptions its hiring for are publicly available on the company’s own job board.
The first listing of note is for a job titled “Technical Lead – Crypto Engineer.” The listing describes that this person will be responsible for “new initiatives for PayPal global with a focus on agility, time-to-market and innovation. The role includes designing, developing and maintaining key crypto products/features targeted towards availability, performance and scalability of PayPal services.”
The second listing worth mentioning is for a blockchain research engineer to work within the company’s research group: “A newly formed group within the Strategic Technology Enablement team chartered with establishing expertise and opinions on emerging blockchain technologies and their potential uses within PayPal.”
So lots of rumor and speculation at this point but I can tell you factually that the fintech space is heavily involved in Crypto right now and many close personal colleagues are gearing up quickly to make significant move on a number of digital asset initiatives. Subscribe to our youtube channel and you will get a good sense of who they are and what is coming.
