Tech giants like PayPal have stayed away from electronic currency like Bitcoin, preferring to work with traditional currency instead.
Bitcoin is a kind of electronic currency that was created in 2009. It is not regulated by any kind of government, and it provides anonymity to its users, allowing them to make purchases in secret. It’s recently got even more interest since its mysterious founder, who went under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto, allegedly revealed himself as Craig Wright, an Australian entrepreneur.
Bitcoin is currently priced at $585 per bitcoin. The prices dropped from $750 last week but are up from $450 just a few weeks ago.
Some think bitcoin might become as important an investment as gold, especially in worrying economic times. With the bull market getting long in tooth, the Brexit vote and the Fed looking incompetent, people want something valuable to invest in, and it looks like bitcoin is becoming that investment.
Bitcoin Gaining Traction with Tech Giants
Bitcoin has only been around for seven years, and during its early years, was often ignored as most didn’t think it had the staying power of traditional currency. But Bitcoin has outperformed early expectations, many think electronic currency is the world’s future, and apparently PayPal agrees.
PayPal is a service that allows you to pay and take payments from individual sources, just by creating an account. It takes away the problems and fees often associated with working with banks, and now it’s partnering with Coinbase, a virtual currency and wallet exchange, so that Coinbase users can sell bitcoins and cash it to their PayPal accounts. While you still can’t buy bitcoins using PayPal, this is a step in the right direction for PayPal, and will line them up with other tech giants like IBM, Microsoft, and Airbnb which are all exploring the value of integrating bitcoin into their systems.
PayPal has filed patents to further explore adding bitcoin and other electronic currencies into its physical smartphone payments and we could soon see bitcoin integrated into all parts of our life, no longer a novelty, but a necessity.
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Christian DeHaemer
Check us out on YouTube!Christian is the founder of Bull and Bust Report and an editor at Energy and Capital. For more on Christian, see his editor’s page.
