I am excited about the price, not excited about paypal at all.
This can't be a whole story, maybe they wait for some ledislation.
Otherwise, why would I buy btc on paypal when I cannot buy thing with that btc and/or move it around?
The answer is HODL
it is not HODLINg if you hodl a paypal database entry and not a real thing.
At least, this is my thinking.
They will funnel your "btc" to people like blockfi and celsius, get money from it while the database entry will do nothing.
On the other hand M. Saylor's true btc buy value went from $425 mil to almost 500 mil in my calculation....
Hmm... I am sceptical too,
but:
If someone buys it there will be an exchange rate, I assume?
And if that is a floating price according to market FX rates - as they already do with other currencies... then they will then need to have a hedge against the kind of thing that happened today to the price.
If someone buys a few bucks of it and leaves it a few months (the big incentive to get hold of it is probably the deflationary aspect) then PP have to cover the risk for when it gets used and cashed in at a possibly higher rate - and it won't be small beer if there is even a small percentage of take-up.
So logically, they will need to actually buy some 'real' Bitcoin to back it up.
Maybe I am wrong, but as strawbs mentioned earlier, there is an argument that the demand does translate into
real demand for BTC. Let's see, it may not all be bad. And (as others have said, too) they may go further if retailers want to receive it, and punters want to buy directly with it. They will still get their cut on the sale, so it's not impossible to envisage.
Maybe they have gamed this thoroughly and looked at what Saylor and others are doing. Maybe they have seen the writing on the wall. Maybe they looked hard and thought 'we have to at least get in before it's Facebook or someone else taking over the market...' Maybe they can see fiat currencies are becoming more wobbly.
Paypal probably wants to be the dominant international payments provider. It is no longer possible to desire that and not see cryptocurrency as either a threat, or an opportunity.
Maybe they
aren't stupid.