There have been some grumbles in the crypto media recently about the difficulties people are encountering when trying to buy Bitcoin. This excellent article by Bailey Reutzel summarises his problems, which is surprising considering he is a seasoned cryptocurrency owner who has been buying it for years. He found that at a number of exchanges he was locked out because of his New York location. In the end he went to PayPal, and after he’d discovered that you can’t buy Bitcoin from a PayPal business account, he set up a personal account and successfully completed a transaction.
PayPal entered the crypto market recently, making it easier for the regular Joe to buy BTC, and it appears to have paid off. According to Martin Young at Cointelegraph, “$242 million worth of digital assets changed hands on the platform during 11th Jan.” PayPal’s recent record was $129 million on 6th January. And, since 1st January, its daily volume has increased by 950%.
This is a moment to reflect on, because as Nuggets News’ Alex Saunders tweeted, “retail has arrived.” That is important for achieving mass adoption.
There is a downside to using PayPal the critics say, because PayPal is like a ‘gated community’ that doesn’t “support withdrawal functionality.” Twitter user Toomas Zobel suggested that the surge in PayPal volume maybe have resulted from retail capitulation, and that there was no way to see if this was a buy or sell volume. He remarked that retail buyers were probably rushing to realise profits when BTC hit $40,000.
However we should be mindful that the PayPal and crypto relationship is just beginning, and that it has plans to extend cryptocurrency services to its 26 million merchants in the coming months. Undoubtedly this will fuel further demand for cryptocurrency and for PayPal’s services. Above all, for the inexperienced crypto buyer, it is a far easier proposition to set up a PayPal account and buy crypto there than venture into the exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase. When you make buying crypto easier for those who have never invested in stocks, you open up the market to the mainstream: something that crypto has been waiting to happen for years. Let’s see if 2021 advances the buying and use of crypto even further.