Bitcoin Forum

Purchased 500 USD in btc from Paypal early last year. Assumed I could transfer to my wallet. No such option. Article from early last year quoted their CEO as saying the option to transfer was coming soon. Nearly a year later and nothing. What is wrong with that company?

If you're not willing to wait, you can just sell the BTC for USD again, and then find someone to buy BTC from using Paxful or Localbitcoins.

You really can't take their word for it, and with pretty much any other company.

1. They could be bullshitting to gain hype
2. The option could've became less of a priority
3. Issues could arise(hence delays)

What is your complain? The word soon in cryptocurrency can mean in an hour, next day, next month, in several years, some day. Nothing is wrong with PayPal, they did not gave exact date so there is nothing to complain about.

Since PayPal allowed only to buy and sell Bitcoin, and dont even allow to transfer among account, I assume that you have bought not a real Bitcoin, but just a number in your account with the name Bitcoin. An Air. But it still has a value within your account, because you can sell it.

You now own $500 Bitcoin as an update in the PayPal database, but the only difference is that the real owner of these coins is PayPal, not you.
If your account has legal information and you trust PayPal, keep that money until the policy is changed, otherwise sell it and buy bitcoin from an exchange that has the ability to withdraw to the wallet.

I will quote PayPal reply: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/cryptocurrencies-tnc

Well, you've just faced the difference between "the commercial" and the reality.
Nothing wrong, nor unusual. They didn't even lie, just made you have unrealistic expectations. Sorry.

As said, if you want to withdraw to your wallet, you'll have to convert back to fiat, withdraw, then use another exchange platform (which will come with its own rules, hence you better read carefully their expectations - like KYC and residence limitations - and their fees, especially withdrawal fees). Just make sure you go to a reputable platform, not a shady one.

Or you can still keep the coins at PayPal for longer, maybe someday (soon, lol!) they will implement proper crypto withdrawals.

Yes, I also heard about this, that it will be possible to withdraw btc from paypal accounts, when exactly this function will operate is not known. It is not known how long this will have to wait, so I would not place high hopes on it.


You can also directly exchange USD to BTC from paypal account in bestchange. But keep in mind that the conversion conditions will not be very favorable and there will be very few exchanges providing this direction.

PayPal will take a lot of time for allowing BTC withdrawal since they will need a 3rd party or purchase there own BTC equivalent to there users currently holding Bitcoin. The price is so volatile that's why they are not that prepared for this since they just want to offer a virtual BTC to avoid the hassle on buying and selling it at the market. They will need to hold a huge amount BTC or hire a 3rd party that will offer BTC in exchange of fiat from them.

I don't have BTC PP, just some locked USD PP with non-existent unlock times.

I think no, you weren't buying real bitcoin. They just add a page for customer's btc balance, but still btc in their control like USD PP in general.

They mean, it's not transferring to a personal wallet (cold wallet). It is transferring between PP accounts and multiple platforms partnering with PP (in PP ecosystem). This compamy is absolutely BS.

Exactly. I have said it before, there is a very strong possibility that PayPal never had a single satoshi to sell to its users or at the very least they hoped they could get people to deposit enough bitcoin in their platform to allow them to cover users' withdrawals. I believe one of the reasons they have not yet allowed withdrawals is that it could prove that PayPal has no bitcoin to pay out since unlike fiat bitcoin transactions can't be faked.

When you have purchased bitcoin from a centralized entity like Paypal, you should have done the due diligence and risk assessment before investing even a penny. It's sad to see that you didn't do it and wasn't aware of such risks.

So I would rather request you to sell your bitcoins to Paypal (the only method available) and come out of such centralized exchanges. Then buy from any Dex or p2p trading platforms to buy bitcoin. The price is at an optimum low level, so that should get you great returns in future.

No other options for users like him. There is no way Paypal will really allow users to withdraw their BTC. I wouldn't expect something good from a company that is already losing relevance and will still do fair things to their clients. A company previously owned by Elon I think Elon still has a hold of the important decision within this company.  Paypal provides worse services when it comes to disputes and they are the ones whos scaming.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Skrill started supporting cryptocurrencies long before PayPal IIRC and although they didn't support withdrawals at the start, they ended up doing it: https://twitter.com/skrill/status/1364277436519772163

So if they're serious about acquiring more users and not losing their current ones, they will definitely follow Skrill's steps.

It's been known that if you buy bitcoin in PayPal, you're like holding it visually and in projection, there's no really bitcoin in your account. That development that they've promised should have rolled out soon if they want to increase their demand. Since many of the PayPal users also know about bitcoin, they should have done that and expedite the development. For the meantime OP, you have no choice but to wait for it to come. If they have given no assured time, just hope for the best that they'll surprise us with a positive news.

I don't this would happen soon. PayPal wasn't that interested in crypto adoption from day 1. Just adding another script to its GUI called cryptocurrencies to create more hype.
I read a lot of similar complaints since the lunch of this service. And it becomes clear that it's not in their intention to develop the service properly.
I feel sorry for those who thought that finally crypto is recognized by the giant PP .

It can be stucked because of development issues technically or it can be canceled forever because of government regulations. They can change everything with new regulations so it is bad when you decide to use a centralized platform and it is worse because that platform has yet allowed you to withdraw your Bitcoin after purchasing.

If you use centralized platforms, when you finish you business trades, withdraw your fund, coin to your non custodial wallet.

This is a prime example of why non-custodial wallets should be the norm. While custodial platforms are still important, it kills me to see how many people have not informed themselves of how to use one.

If you have an opportunity to secure your own funds and not rely on any intermediary, why not take it? Or at the very least learn how to.

Tbh, is never their intention right from the beginning to develop the service properly. They integrated Bitcoin because it presented the potential to be the next bigger thing to facilitate payment. Meanwhile, this is also what Paypal does,  in other to gain the trust of people using BTC and to keep their customers who might see Bitcoin potential as something incredible.
They join the system because they will lose the battle if they are against it.

Paypal makes their living off locking people out of their account, even restricting merchant account over what they would claim to be "suspicious" activity. In the past they will let you sign up without KYC and randomly request verification, but then reject all your documents despite being perfectly legitimate.

Then they create Venmo for mobile devices because they want a new application that steers away from the Paypal name that is just as awful.

There's nothing wrong with them, these sort of restrictions are part of their business model.

Was never available to me in either of my PayPal accounts (one in EU and one in Asia) and despite knowing it wasn't actual BTC, I still thought it would be cool as another option.

As many have already said, "soon" can mean anything in crypto speak (I shall not mention ETF yardsticks) but if you want to clutch at straws, they already missed out their 2020 roadmap to have a digital wallet by 2021 BUT in May did say they would start it off with 3rd party crypto w/ds so, just wait I guess. Or sell for USD and just buy your own BTC.

Just this month said it was looking at stablecoins (blockchain-based), so we know they're keen to not let hope spring uneternally.

We're going to see if they're putting where their mouth is. They've made a noise after making this feature added to their platform and they know that this is a huge competition to them since there are a lot of big crypto exchanges that are becoming known to the masses.
They have not given an exact time for it and by just allowing that withdrawal function to receive crypto, that's going to be one big thing if they ever allow that to happen, it's the one function that we're waiting for.

Exactly !
The step was made as a consumption decision for old/new PP users just not to lose its status towards the huge wave of adoption.
Me myself i am not a PP user but i found it funny how you can purchase bitcoin using PP from PP itself without being able to transfer it outside the PP system. this is against the blockchain concept for which people chose bitcoin over classi currencies. It's just like holding money in a bank account without being able to transfer it to another bank user without cashing it out and pay a high fee for conversion/transfer. 
I don't also think PP integrated Bitcoin because it representes the potential to be the next bigger thing to facilitate payment as they could just let crypto exchanges support PP services .

PayPal might be the single worst place to buy bitcoin.  For starters this is one of the most corrupt companies on the planet.  PayPal has complaint lists a million miles long.  They are constantly freezing accounts for absolutely no reason at all, making people jump through incredible hoops to un-freeze their accounts.  PayPal doesn't want to allow you to send funds out because they then may not get the selling fees when the times comes for you to sell.  My advice, stay away from PayPal period!

What was the reason for you purchasing with them? Always do proper research, if I were you I would go with the advice the first replier gave, I always see PayPal as a company not in any relation with crypto-currency, so for now I avoid doing any crypto deals with them, infact keeping BTC or Crypto in anything other than your decentralized Bitcoin wallet is a no for me

Nothing wrong. PayPal is a large company trusted by people from all over the world. I think its executives only consider purchasing bitcoins as an investment option for their customers. I believe that the Paxos company still stores all of PayPal's bitcoins, so these assets are indeed backed by real coins on the BTC blockchain.

Perhaps PayPal is wary of possible malicious actions by its customers such as sending BTC to the wrong persons and so on. Currently, PayPal simply makes money from trading commissions. I doubt they allow clients to withdraw coins to BTC addresses in the foreseeable future. :-[

BTC stuck in Paypal? let's just say it's a long term investment, but I believe Paypal is a trusted company and it is impossible to take BTC from a user's wallet on paypal. it's just a matter of withdrawing and sending BTC to another address.
if you don't want to be stuck on paypal, you can buy bitcoin on other exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance and several other trusted exchanges.

No more updates about their plan to add the Bitcoin withdrawal option on Paypal even on Twitter I never heard any news.

Maybe they are going to add a withdrawal option for Bitcoin in the next blockhalving year 2024.

For now, they keep Paypal users safe and I think that's the only way they know to protect people from hackers and scammer that is why they still didn't add the withdrawal option for Bitcoin. There is no problem with having BTC on Paypal if your plan is to hold BTC then Paypal is a good place where you can exchange them back to USD once the price is high. The only problem is you didn't actually own that BTC because you don't have any backup keys or private keys.

What about kuckoin and binance. Both are very trusted exchange but people still lose their money inside them. No matter how trusted the company but if the hacker is good, they can always access it. I think this is one of the reasons why the OP is worrying too much or simply he is not into long term that is why he wants his money right now.

I think paypal announces it before that you cannot withdraw your bitcoin to another external wallet so I am not sure how he missed it. It's his fault anyway on why his money got stuck but what if he converts his btc into paypal money? and then exchange the paypal for btc here in the forum.

It's disappointing that PayPal doesn't allow withdrawing Bitcoin to one's own wallet, but maybe it has to do with legal issues. When you withdraw fiat, you get it to your bank account, and bank accounts aren't anonymous, so your identity is effectively verified. If you withdraw cryptos to your own private wallet, it's less obvious. I'm sorry that you're not able to withdraw Bitcoin directly. I guess for now the best option would be to sell of fiat, buy Bitcoin on an exchange, and then withdraw Bitcoin. Or you can hodl on PayPal, waiting for things to change. They're a reputable company, so I don't think your money's in danger with them, but they will be able to restrict your access to it if they feel like you're doing something illegal. They can also impose whatever documentation requirements they feel are necessary to ensure they comply with AML policies. So it's better to hodl your BTC in your own wallet, of course.