PayPal has been a forefront for lots of cryptocurrency traders when it comes to withdrawing money from their trading platforms. However, never has it before supported the actual bitcoin deposits on their accounts. This can shift the market for the worst or the best depending on the outlook of a person, however, most probably it will be a welcome addition for everyone interested in trading.
PayPal is an American company operating a worldwide service of the online payments system, which supports online money transfers, thus, making it a viable alternative to the traditional paper-based methods like money orders and checks. It was founded back in 1998 by notorious people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Max Levchin, and Yu Pan. The company has always been at the forefront of the innovation driving online markets with its modernized version of electronic wallet supporting almost all traditional currencies with many different platforms like Steam and G2A to sell video games, at some point Amazon used to support as well, and one of the most popular uses out there with Canadian online casino games letting people deposit money through PayPal, thus, avoiding the security risk of inputting banking details on third-party websites. This is even more useful in countries like Norway, where online gambling is fully monopolized by the government, thus, a lot of people are utilizing their ability to buy crypto over the darknet and proceed to deposit and gamble them away. Any winnings are then transferred to their PayPal account and withdrawn without alerting the government institutions. Even some of the porn websites that support payment from PayPal are working on replacement strategies to support cryptocurrencies. This will, in turn, this new development will put PayPal back on the market. PayPal overall has been cooperating with lots of firms to create a huge user base as well as the market for the users.
Due to its profile, it is not a surprise that PayPal would want to move into the cryptocurrency market as well. Since technically it is an e-wallet, but for traditional currencies, it would be a very natural expansion. The new rumors of PayPal hiring the crypto engineers have filled the rebound in the price of the Bitcoin (BTC), which is hitting $9600-$9800 at this moment. It is said that the company wants to enable direct cryptocurrency purchases for more than 300 million users. The job descriptions are available on PayPal’s very own online platform.
The first in the list is the job titled “Technical Lead – Crypto Engineer,” which is described as a person who 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 interesting job opportunity is a “blockchain research engineer,” who will be working in the research and development group, which is “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.”
This is why the whole community is acting like someone startled a beehive. It is obvious that PayPal is looking into its first steps into the cryptocurrency market with the job requirements coincidentally overlapping with that of a person who’s involved in Bitcoin development with demands like knowledge of C++, cryptographic libraries, and asymmetric cryptography.
The 10-K annual report has also been filed. This is a statement required to be done by the federal securities regulations, where the public company has to disclose information on the ongoing basis about the risks associated with their decisions. The report provides in-depth information about PayPal’s business and financial condition including financial statements and mentions blockchain and virtual currencies as possible risk factors that can negatively impact the company in the future. This is to be taken as a preemptive warning for their shareholders about the risks associated with their initiative to move into the crypto market.
It is worth noting that earlier this year in an interview PayPal’s Chief Technology Officer Sri Shivananda has stated that the company was working on the development of its “perspective and view on [blockchain] technology itself to see how it can help us contribute to the concept of creating an open digital payments platform that can serve everyone.” while adding that they are strong believers of the potential of blockchain. Shivananda has added that the digitalization of currency is only a matter of time.
How Has PayPal’s Decision Impacted The Crypto Market?
As we have already mentioned previously the price of BTC has jumped by a good margin due to these posters. However, we are approaching BTC options contracts expiration dates thus making the market even more volatile. This may not be due to PayPal but a normal behavior expected from the crypto market where it becomes more and more volatile before and during the major options expiration times. Meanwhile, Glassnode’s Market Value and Realized Value (MVRV) ratio remain on the lower levels despite the price surges.
Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency affected by these recent developments. Altcoin market was also shaken with DigiByte (DGB), Bitcoin Diamond (BCD), and Ontology becoming top gainers while Orbs Hybrid Blockchain (OHB) and Hycon lagging behind and even losing up to 10% of their value.