Will PayPal Ever Accept BitCoin?
We all know what PayPal is, right? I don’t really need to be telling you about it – after all, it’s the world’s first and most popular e-wallet service, home to 188 million active users, spawning numerous imitators and pretty-much singlehandedly planting the idea in people’s heads that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to give your bank details to a stranger on the Internet after all. Hell, chances are you’re probably using it right now, and why wouldn’t you? It’s safe, it’s convenient, it’s quick and easy to use, it’s everything you could possibly want in a service like this. While initially it pretty much started as nothing more than an extension of eBay, a safe way to handle payments for products in the not-exactly-safe environment of a used goods marketplace where scams weren’t exactly uncommon, PayPal has since evolved way past its initial programming to deal with pretty much every single market and currency around. You can buy clothes in the UK, you can pay your bills in Germany, hell, you can even commission lewd art from an artist in the Philippines! The sky’s the limit when it comes to payments with PayPal… right? Well, not quite. There’s one thing you can’t do – work with BitCoin, or any other e-currency.
I mean, sure, you can sometimes do it… If you live in North America and get extremely lucky. The rest of us, though, are pretty much screwed as far as BitCoin transactions are concerned, with PayPal remaining determined to keep them at arm’s length and focus on regular currency for the time being. But why is that, and more importantly, is there a chance that this policy might change in the future? Let’s answer the first question first, since it’s a lot easier to tackle. The thing is, there are two main reasons why PayPal is staying far away from e-currency at the moment. First and foremost, it’s extremely new. Established currencies have been around for hundreds of years, while e-currency has only been active for a few, at best. It’s untested. If it crashes, that could bring down a significant portion of the company with it, potentially. And second of all, bitcoin is, as of this moment, primarily associated with illicit use. You don’t need to tell me that it’s not ALL it’s being used for, not by a long shot – I know. For example, you can find just as many online casinos that accept bitcoins as you can find online casinos that accept PayPal here, and yet, because it was used for buying drugs on the deep web, BitCoin has gained a reputation of being a sort of illegitimate currency. Unless it can really shake that off, I can’t imagine PayPal widely adopting it.
As for whether or not that will ever happen… I don’t know. Honestly, it’s hard to tell. I mean, in today’s world of technology and trends, things continuously come and go. I’d like to think that, if given enough time, BitCoin will certainly get rid of its reputation and will be accepted with open arms by PayPal, but honestly, it’s hard to believe that in 10-20 years either BitCoin OR PayPal will still be as relevant as they are today. Who knows, maybe in the year 2036 we’re going to be discussing whether MoneyBuddy will adopt MemeGold in the near future. You know, if the world’s economy hasn’t completely collapsed by then.
Can we all agree that bitcoin are pretty great? I mean, the fact that they belong to the Internet (and as such – to everyone and no one) rather than to a particular country or nation alone elevates them to several magnitudes above traditional currencies. Remember what happened to the British pound right after Brexit? It plummeted to the ground, and many Brits living abroad suddenly found their currency devalued to the point where they couldn’t even pay for rent anymore. Honestly, I can’t really imagine anything similar happening to bitcoin, since it’s so very disconnected from the real world. Tomorrow we could find out who invented bitcoin and discover that he’s the true assassin of Kennedy, and it wouldn’t affect the currency one tiny bit! And let’s not forget that you can actually get bitcoin for free by “mining” them, providing part of your machine’s resources in return for a small amount of bitcoin? When you consider all of that, it’s not exactly a stretch to assume that many people would want to use bitcoin for their day to day transactions. Some websites around the world have caught onto this and have opened their doors to the currency, and in many cities across the globe there are even terminals that you can use to pay your bills with bitcoin! But unfortunately, progress has been slow, and many of the biggest online retailers have yet to join in on the trend.
We don’t really know all that much about BitCoin. We don’t know who made it (there are theories, but nothing proven), we don’t know the exact infrastructure by which it functions, hell, we don’t even know why exactly it exists in the first place. All we know is that it does, in fact, exist, and every year more and more people are dedicating their businesses to it in some form or another. Some build establishments to “mine” bitcoin, others have merely began accepting BitCoin transactions within their establishments. And while most of the people working with BitCoin run smaller businesses, for the first time we’re starting to see some bigger companies accepting the currency, which is absolutely groundbreaking. Especially considering how much its value has dropped this year, it’s nothing short of impressive that BitCoin remains as strong as it is when it comes to its presence.