The credibility boost Bitcoin has been looking for could be around the corner thanks to major e-tailers eBay and Amazon.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, eBay CEO John Donahoe stated that they are exploring ways to integrate Bitcoin into the PayPal payments network — i.e. allow people to send and accept Bitcoin payments on PayPal. eBay acquired PayPal in October 2002 (hard to believe it has been more than 10 years!) for $1.5 billion.
Ironically, although Bitcoin is a virtual and online currency, Donahoe’s view is that adding Bitcoin as a payment option would would help eBay in its effort to push PayPal use at bricks-and-mortar retailers, rather than just online. Interesting.
And eBay’s rival in the e-tailing world, Amazon, is getting set to launch its own Bitcoin copycat currency, imaginatively called Amazon Coins. Initially available only in the U.S., Amazon Coins can be used within the Amazon ecosystem to purchase apps, games, and in-app items via Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Amazon plans to launch Amazon Coins later this month, with the company planning to give out tens of millions of dollars in Amazon Coins to Kindle customers. The plan, it seems, is to dangle these tens of millions of dollars of upcoming Kindle consumer spending in front of app developers, to get them to develop more Kindle apps.
What does this all mean for the Forex world? As Bitcoin comes more and more into use in the real world (today it is still owned mainly by Bitcoin speculators such as the Winklevoss twins), its volatility should wane somewhat and its credibility as a legitimate independent currency — alongside the USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, CHF, et al — will be cemented. And as we’re already heading down this road, we expect more and more FX and Binary brokers to follow the lead of firms such as IG which was first to launch Bitcoin binaries, and Plus500 which was first to offer leveraged Bitcoin CFD trading. And before long, we expect quotations for BTCUSD and EURBTC to be as ubiquitous as GBPUSD and EURUSD.
Stay tuned to LeapRate as we continue to follow this interesting sector…
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