Towards the end of last week bitcoin was trading around $54,000. And I honestly wasn’t sure which way we were going to break, up or down.
I really would have been fine either way. As I said last week, the market needs a breather. We’ve come a little too far, too fast.
But a dip isn’t in the cards — at least not yet. PayPal’s decision to launch its full crypto integration this week decided the matter. Here’s an excerpt from Reuters’ reporting.
Customers who hold bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin in PayPal digital wallets will now be able to convert their holdings into fiat currencies at checkouts to make purchases, the company said.
The service, which PayPal revealed it was working on late last year, will be available at all of its 29 million merchants in the coming months, the company said.
Those of us who follow this stuff closely weren’t surprised by this announcement. PayPal already lets users buy crypto through its platform. Adding the ability to use crypto for purchases was the natural next step. But I had friends who were absolutely shocked. They had no idea PayPal was integrating crypto.
So it looks like prices will keep going up — at least for a while. But I don’t think the PayPal integration is going to have much of an immediate effect on real-world use.
Crypto is still at a stage where it’s more about saving and holding rather than spending. For those who live in places (like Venezuela) where they may need to keep all their savings in bitcoin, such a service could definitely be useful. But most of us here in the U.S. don’t have any real need to actually spend crypto — yet.
Still, it’s a great vote of confidence from a major brand. PayPal has around 29 million merchants who use it to accept payments. The “We accept crypto” branding alongside PayPal’s logo alone is priceless.
All in all, it was another great week.