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Since PayPal announced last week that it would allow in the coming months the purchase, sale and storage of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, the whole cryptosphere is talking about it.
After the almost general enthusiasm, some observers have pointed out a significant fact that takes the form of a big problem: apparently, it will not be possible to remove its cryptos from the platform. In other words, we have to trust PayPal to secure our cryptocurrencies.
And as they say, “Not your keys, not your bitcoins” (not your private keys, not your bitcoins). This is indeed a way of doing things that is at the antipodes of Bitcoin’s philosophy and DNA which gives back monetary sovereignty to users who finally free themselves from intermediaries and other trusted third parties such as banks or online payment companies like PayPal.
In short, if PayPal scares Bitcoiners, and rightly so, some seem to have already tested the service. This is the case of Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, a peer-to-peer payment company.
The company’s CEO has indeed tweeted “I bought $100 in BTC via @PayPal! A significant milestone for the market”.
However, he didn’t give more details on how he was able to access this service before its official launch.
We know that the new PayPal service will support several cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin of course, but also Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Transactions will be made in cryptos on merchant sites but will be settled in their local currency.
In the second quarter of 2020, no less than 346 million PayPal accounts are active. As for the transaction volume, we are talking about 222 billion dollars. There are potentially 26 million merchants in the world that will be visited by PayPal customers in 2021 and where they can spend their cryptos… Big news indeed for general adoption!