PayPal’s big announcement of offering cryptocurrency trading services has taken the financial world by storm. It’s about time that every major global bank will possibly provide support for the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
On Wednesday, October 21, online payments giant PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL) announced its entry into the crypto market by launching its crypto trading services. After receiving the license from NYDFS, PayPal said that it will first launch its crypto trading services in the U.S. market in the coming weeks. Later, it will expand the services to the global market by early 2021. Bitcoin enthusiasts and the overall cryptocurrency market rejoiced on the news. In the last 24 hours, BTC has attained another milestone jumping 8% and moving above $13,000 levels being pushed by the news about crypto services from PayPal. This swift move comes just within 24 hours of BTC crossing the $12,000 mark.
At press time, Bitcoin is trading 6.65% up at $12,797 with a market cap of $236 billion. On the weekly charts, Bitcoin’s price has gained close to 15%. With this move, the world’s largest cryptocurrency also extends its market dominance now above 61.1%. PayPal’s entry to the crypto space has recently got the industry heavyweights talking about it. Some analysts say that this will force every major bank in the market to offer support for Bitcoin.
After PayPal‘a news, every major bank is having a meeting about how to support bitcoin. It’s no longer optional… pic.twitter.com/eQrdfa4KJ7
— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) October 21, 2020
The good about the PayPal announcement is that the online payments giant will also extend support for cryptocurrency shopping. Meaning crypto users on PayPal can buy products by making payments in the purchase. However, the merchants will continue to receive payments in the fiat equivalent. With over 346 million active accounts worldwide, the scope is just massive.
Crypto in PayPal Account Can’t Move to Other Accounts
Along with cryptocurrency trading services, PayPal will also allow the account holders to store crypto in their digital wallets. However, PayPal’s terms of service state that with the PayPal digital wallet users can only hold cryptocurrencies that they purchase through the PayPal account. Moreover, they can’t transfer crypto from PayPal to other accounts or vice versa.
OK, we can forget this Paypal “news”.
“Crypto in [the Paypal] account cannot be transferred to other accounts on or off PayPal.”
So, this is all a big PayPal nothing burger, just entries in a central PayPal database, nothing to do with #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/cHGQIEdHaL
— PlanB (@100trillionUSD) October 21, 2020
This restriction hasn’t gone much well with the crypto community who think that it will limit the very freedom that cryptocurrencies have to offer. It looks like things will be more clear over the coming weeks. Cryptocurrency analyst Will Woo also presents another interesting fact with the help of actual numbers.
Citing data from Glassnode, Will Woo noted that Bitcoin’s user base is more than half the total users of Bitcoin. Moreover, he adds that over 2.4% of the world population is HODLing BTC at this point. He adds that we are soon breaching the “early adopter” stage and entering the “early majority” stage.
Presently 2.4% of the world population are HODLers of #Bitcoin. We are now broaching the early adopters phase.
You are very early on the curve.
User adoption is about to go exponential according to the adoption S-curve. This is why BTC will decouple stocks, and it is very soon. https://t.co/zX1hmZqNGB pic.twitter.com/uDYm2xWNBK
— Willy Woo (@woonomic) October 21, 2020
Needless to say that PayPal’s entry has really got the big players in the financial markets thinking curiously about NOT missing this opportunity. We can expect more players to follow suit. Also, with the rising institutional participation, the Bitcoin mania has just started to unleash.
Bhushan is a FinTech enthusiast and holds a good flair in understanding financial markets. His interest in economics and finance draw his attention towards the new emerging Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency markets. He is continuously in a learning process and keeps himself motivated by sharing his acquired knowledge. In free time he reads thriller fictions novels and sometimes explore his culinary skills.
