Coindesk reported on it first just a few days ago as a rumor, but it really does seem that Paypal will be following through with enabling customers to withdrawal their BTC, LTC, BCH and ETH from their Paypal accounts.
In Q1 2021, Paypal handled around 285 billion USD of transactions on their platform. With this kind of money moving around, one can only wonder how much of it may find its way into the crypto world if being offered a seamless transition. With such a large company enabling cryptocurrency transactions, we should look at what this may mean for the ecosystem as a whole.
Increased Trust
If this giant money moving company is willing to put enough trust into the crypto world that they will not only offer the purchase of, but also the withdrawal of crypto assets the bar is being set much higher than that of the past.
Learning about cryptocurrency, I heard of exchanges such as BitInstant or Mount Gox. BitInstant was run by a very young Charlie Shrem, who ended up in jail for being negligent in enforcing anti-money laundering on the site and allowing for a cash flow into the silk road. Mount Gox was formerly a magic card game fandom site that became the custodian of over 70% of the worlds Bitcoin at one point.
Going from experiment and uncertainty to a trusted name such as Paypal or Coinbase has been and will continue to be enormous for bringing in big money investors to the ecosystem. With a proven track record and governmentally enforced clarity and regulations, Paypal may not be the crypto exchange of the future, but it may help to bring on a lot of people who have been sidelined out of fear that they might get screwed over.
Seamless Purchases
There are over 392 million accounts on Paypal. My guess would be that not every one of those users has a cryptocurrency account on an exchange or a cryptocurrency wallet of any kind. Now they will! With one click, they enable their accounts to buy, store and transfer cryptocurrency. The ease of use will be incredibly helpful in onboarding new people into cryptocurrency. It'll be a baby step of course, but I expect a lot of documentation to come out as well to help people answer questions they may have regarding what they are purchasing.
Increased Volume
With more people being able to purchase and store crypto without the need to sign up for a different account than the Paypal they already have, I predict we will see an increase in the amount of volume in crypto markets. It won't be a massive boom all at once, but this is another product that will be lowering the barriers to entry and providing a direct use case for cryptocurrency. With the established nature of the platform, I think that Paypal will be leading the way for US-based financial apps to really begin integrating and rewarding cryptocurrency users at a high rate. With the growing popularity of the market, financial platforms will be incentivized to offer benefits on their platforms to attract new users and increase the amount of usage that existing users get out of their applications.
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