My 'vast' BTC hodl on PayPal

[sirazimuth]

...
I am highly active with paypal.

I guess it was why I was able to do it so easily.

Would be nice to know how many were stalled like you were.

Yeah , I kinda figured that.
Not having logged into my pp account in so long they gotta make sure I'm still worthy I guess.
No worries. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of cash I had after cashing in the accumulated reward points I had completely forgotten about.
Waiting 2 weeks for some "free" bitcoin?  fine by me.
Oh wait, not my keys not my.....ahh nm.... (ask me if I give a shit.... lol. )

[1714187683]

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[vapourminer]

...
I am highly active with paypal.

I guess it was why I was able to do it so easily.

Would be nice to know how many were stalled like you were.

Yeah , I kinda figured that.
Not having logged into my pp account in so long they gotta make sure I'm still worthy I guess.
No worries. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of cash I had after cashing in the accumulated reward points I had completely forgotten about.
Waiting 2 weeks for some "free" bitcoin?  fine by me.
Oh wait, not my keys not my.....ahh nm.... (ask me if I give a shit.... lol. )

robinhood was the same way. couldnt initially buy paper bitcoin because of some account restriction. this is after photo id and verified email was done. however i had only been with robinhood a few days at this point. sent support a message and the restriction was gone next day.

so now i have paper bitcoin. yay for me.

[adaseb]

...
I am highly active with paypal.

I guess it was why I was able to do it so easily.

Would be nice to know how many were stalled like you were.

Yeah , I kinda figured that.
Not having logged into my pp account in so long they gotta make sure I'm still worthy I guess.
No worries. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of cash I had after cashing in the accumulated reward points I had completely forgotten about.
Waiting 2 weeks for some "free" bitcoin?  fine by me.
Oh wait, not my keys not my.....ahh nm.... (ask me if I give a shit.... lol. )

robinhood was the same way. couldnt initially buy paper bitcoin because of some account restriction. this is after photo id and verified email was done. however i had only been with robinhood a few days at this point. sent support a message and the restriction was gone next day.

so now i have paper bitcoin. yay for me.

If I recall it took Robinhood many many months to make trading crypto available for all the 50 states. They did it according to states at first. There was many reasons for this. One of them was incase there was some bugs, if there was a bug it would be better to find it before there was too many actual trades taking place.

Second was that during the launch there was crazy demand for crypto. So by limiting the states not everybody would buy it at once and cause supply issues. Last reason was probably the verification process. Instead of making people wait like 1.5 years to get verified like Poloniex, they did it in batches so people didn't have to wait too long. 

Most likely Paypal is taking the exact same route.

[JayJuanGee]

May I ask what is the purpose of this "experiment"?
It's a very cool thing that PayPal accepts cryptocurrencies, but why did you choose this wallet to collect Bitcoin? Do you want to prove something by this? I am asking really seriously, because somehow I do not see any greater sense in what you do, of course I do not see also anything wrong with it.

This is a good question. I have to ponder upon the answer.

Just off the top, it seems quite clear that you should be able to gain exposure to BTC volatility by holding some or all of your paypal account value in BTC.

Let's say that historically, you have a floating paypal balance that bounces around between $200 and $5,000.  If you choose to allocate a certain percentage to BTC (whether 5%, 25%, 50%, 90% or some variating percentages that is based on other factors chosen by you), then you could potentially monitor the extent to which there might be advantages/disadvantages in holding some portion of your account value in BTC rather than dollars.

Of course, during high BTC UPpity volatility there should be greater benefits to hold larger portions of your account value in BTC rather than dollars, and opposingly, during high DOWNity BTC volatility, there should be greater benefits of holding larger portions of your account value in dollars rather than BTC.

For all those saying that this will "increase btc adoption" and "grandmas will buy btc on PayPal", I'm glad you are documenting this.

You are actually highlighting and showing how useless this extra step is, versus just buying stuff through PayPal with your CC or bank account directly.  

That does seem to be one of the BIG questions concerning if there happens to be any value in holding some or all of your account value in BTC rather than sticking with dollars ONLY?

[philipma1957]

May I ask what is the purpose of this "experiment"?
It's a very cool thing that PayPal accepts cryptocurrencies, but why did you choose this wallet to collect Bitcoin? Do you want to prove something by this? I am asking really seriously, because somehow I do not see any greater sense in what you do, of course I do not see also anything wrong with it.

This is a good question. I have to ponder upon the answer.

Just off the top, it seems quite clear that you should be able to gain exposure to BTC volatility by holding some or all of your paypal account value in BTC.

Let's say that historically, you have a floating paypal balance that bounces around between $200 and $5,000.  If you choose to allocate a certain percentage to BTC (whether 5%, 25%, 50%, 90% or some variating percentages that is based on other factors chosen by you), then you could potentially monitor the extent to which there might be advantages/disadvantages in holding some portion of your account value in BTC rather than dollars.

Of course, during high BTC UPpity volatility there should be greater benefits to hold larger portions of your account value in BTC rather than dollars, and opposingly, during high DOWNity BTC volatility, there should be greater benefits of holding larger portions of your account value in dollars rather than BTC.

For all those saying that this will "increase btc adoption" and "grandmas will buy btc on PayPal", I'm glad you are documenting this.

You are actually highlighting and showing how useless this extra step is, versus just buying stuff through PayPal with your CC or bank account directly.  

That does seem to be one of the BIG questions concerning if there happens to be any value in holding some or all of your account value in BTC rather than sticking with dollars ONLY?

Also this is one of two PayPal accounts that I have.

I can easily do hodl and fully understand cap gain tax for it. Or cap loss carry over.

To me it is a no brainer to take advantage of it.

Frankly I am too old (63) to deal with hiding my KYC info. So this makes things easy to do.

This account can be a simply hodl account for BTC. With my past history of over 10 years with this account and 10's of thousands in USD fiat charges and payments. This is simply another piece of investment for me.  And there is a hedge to it. Along with a simple accounting for cap gain/loss.  Just buy and don't sell for 2-3-5 years

At 63 I don't think in terms of 30 year hodl.

But I do think a nice 15 month plan as stated earlier would give me an idea of what this PayPal account can do for me.

[JayJuanGee]

May I ask what is the purpose of this "experiment"?
It's a very cool thing that PayPal accepts cryptocurrencies, but why did you choose this wallet to collect Bitcoin? Do you want to prove something by this? I am asking really seriously, because somehow I do not see any greater sense in what you do, of course I do not see also anything wrong with it.

This is a good question. I have to ponder upon the answer.

Just off the top, it seems quite clear that you should be able to gain exposure to BTC volatility by holding some or all of your paypal account value in BTC.

Let's say that historically, you have a floating paypal balance that bounces around between $200 and $5,000.  If you choose to allocate a certain percentage to BTC (whether 5%, 25%, 50%, 90% or some variating percentages that is based on other factors chosen by you), then you could potentially monitor the extent to which there might be advantages/disadvantages in holding some portion of your account value in BTC rather than dollars.

Of course, during high BTC UPpity volatility there should be greater benefits to hold larger portions of your account value in BTC rather than dollars, and opposingly, during high DOWNity BTC volatility, there should be greater benefits of holding larger portions of your account value in dollars rather than BTC.

For all those saying that this will "increase btc adoption" and "grandmas will buy btc on PayPal", I'm glad you are documenting this.

You are actually highlighting and showing how useless this extra step is, versus just buying stuff through PayPal with your CC or bank account directly.  

That does seem to be one of the BIG questions concerning if there happens to be any value in holding some or all of your account value in BTC rather than sticking with dollars ONLY?

Also this is one of two PayPal accounts that I have.

I can easily do hodl and fully understand cap gain tax for it. Or cap loss carry over.

To me it is a no brainer to take advantage of it.

Frankly I am too old (63) to deal with hiding my KYC info. So this makes things easy to do.

This account can be a simply hodl account for BTC. With my past history of over 10 years with this account and 10's of thousands in USD fiat charges and payments. This is simply another piece of investment for me.  And there is a hedge to it. Along with a simple accounting for cap gain/loss.  Just buy and don't sell for 2-3-5 years

At 63 I don't think in terms of 30 year hodl.

But I do think a nice 15 month plan as stated earlier would give me an idea of what this PayPal account can do for me.

I have still only read the first page of responses in this thread, and from your response to my post, I realize that I engaged in a bit of a presumption that some dickering around of account values might be reasonable in terms of considering potential future BTC price movements, and many of us longer term BTC HODLers realize that there are some problematic aspects in changing allocations based on anticipated future value (aka possible future BTC price movements) - which your post highlighted the weighing of some of the considerations that would be involved to move in and out of positions rather than attempting to maintain a more steady position.

By the way, I was presuming a bit of a range for your possible account value fluctuations, and really, if your account is anywhere in the area of $200 to $5k in the next year and a half or so, there might not be any great attention that would come from the IRS, unless they are adding up other areas in which accounts and BTC activities are adding up that go beyond reasonable assessments of BTC related activities..  Of course, these areas remain in flux, so individuals are likely to come to varying conclusions regarding how much reporting is reasonable and practical - especially related to potential micro-transactions.  I am NOT sure the extent to which your age matters, but of course, I get your point that if you have already built up systems that largely already account for your various BTC transactions in relatively comprehensive ways, why would you NOT just fold your PP related BTC activities into systems that you have already established - even though others might come to differing assessments regarding prudence and practicalities in that direction.

[philipma1957]

At JayJaunGee

When I got into this all back in 2012 I always went with kyc and government disclosure.

My reasons for this won't fit non-USA filers

And they won't fit many USA filers.

But they do fit for me.

They will fit for a lot of PayPal users in the correct USA states. Millions for sure.

Will I make PayPal sole hodl account for btc?  most likely no.

but will I make this particular PayPal account solely for hodl? YES I will


I have a second very active PayPal account and I could go with BTC in it.
It could be a transactional account with lots of ins and outs.
But for now I do not need to be any more complex with PayPal then buying 20 or 30 for 40 usd in btc every month or so and holding it.

So I reviewed this PayPal account and realized to keep math simple I should keep purchases at round numbers.
So I now have spent $100 usd on BTC and my BTC holdings are about 103.

[TheYankeesWin!]

as you know PayPal lets you buy btc. So I will track my BTC accumulation on my PayPal account for the next 15 months.

I will delete every post that says "no keys not your money."

 I know that.




...

...

so you did a 20.00 usd on the 21st
         then a 20.00 usd on the 22nd
and then a    21.32 usd on the 23rd
followed by a 20.00 usd on the 28th
lastly a final   18.68 usd on the 28th.

  a grand total of $101.32 usd out of pocket in usd funds

with some growth to 102.37 usd .

 Am I correct in this?
I see the pages and grabbed screen shots from your posts. I realized it may not be clear you are out of pocket $100.00 so far.

[el kaka22]

What this topic could make as a "goal" could be to show people that paypal is doing something amazing, they are allowing people who have been using paypal for years and years and of course OP is also a bitcoin person but there are so many who are not, what OP is showing on this topic that if you are a paypal user you could potentially get involved with crypto a lot easier nowadays thanks to this new addition, look how easy it was for OP to just get in and get some bitcoin and keep it in his account without any problem at all.

This is why I highly suggest that we should encourage behaviors like this, maybe even turn this place into a race type of thing where everyone shows off how much bitcoin they have on their paypal, obviously not everyone can have the same amount since some people are richer but we could show off as "part of the paypal crypto gang" and that hype could help us.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

So if you buy BTC on Paypal, what can you do with it exactly besides sell it back for US dollars sometime in the future. This is the part that I am confused. This seems like a good way to get people to invest in Bitcoin but will they ever be able to spend it?

Yeah, it all seems strange to me--but it's the same thing on Robinhood, where you can "buy" bitcoin that you don't have the private keys to.  You can't deposit bitcoin on Robinhood and you can't withdraw it, so it's just a way to speculate on the price.

Fuckin' stupid if you ask me.  Philipma1957, I appreciate you trying this out so I don't have to.  I don't expect there to be any astounding outcome to this "experiment" but I wasn't even aware this function had even launched yet.  I just checked a few days ago and there was no option for me to buy bitcoin on my PayPal account.  Just as well, I suppose.

[DustyRah]

For all those saying that this will "increase btc adoption" and "grandmas will buy btc on PayPal", I'm glad you are documenting this.

You are actually highlighting and showing how useless this extra step is, versus just buying stuff through PayPal with your CC or bank account directly. 

I'm almost wondering if PayPal is even buying any crypto behind the scenes at all. It could all just be a database ledger entry into their cash reserves balance sheet.

They are required to hold a certain amount of reserve but they don't have to actually perform the trades on the backend. They have to settle on a regular basis. They will certainly skim dough on all these buy/sell trades and more.

This will bring nice fresh cannon fodder to blow through and make BTC price rise.

[philipma1957]

i don't think anyone should have 10% or more of their holdings on PayPal, but I think every person on bitcointalk that can buy 20 usd worth and let it sit should do so.

For me this is a no brainer to do. 100 usd worth  so far and slowly buy with my rebate money from
"retail me not"

won't hurt me. I will have 500-1000 worth in about 15 months. I can live with holding that.

[adaseb]

So if you buy BTC on Paypal, what can you do with it exactly besides sell it back for US dollars sometime in the future. This is the part that I am confused. This seems like a good way to get people to invest in Bitcoin but will they ever be able to spend it?

Yeah, it all seems strange to me--but it's the same thing on Robinhood, where you can "buy" bitcoin that you don't have the private keys to.  You can't deposit bitcoin on Robinhood and you can't withdraw it, so it's just a way to speculate on the price.

Fuckin' stupid if you ask me.  Philipma1957, I appreciate you trying this out so I don't have to.  I don't expect there to be any astounding outcome to this "experiment" but I wasn't even aware this function had even launched yet.  I just checked a few days ago and there was no option for me to buy bitcoin on my PayPal account.  Just as well, I suppose.

I think the reason why most bitcoin holders are happy is because its technically suppose to increase the price of bitcoin because even though you don't technically hold bitcoin, the counterparty in this scenarios whether is Robinhood or Paypal, they need to hedge somehow in case bitcoin goes to like $100K.

So the counterparty needs to buy bitcoin somehow, whether by Coinbase, or bitcoin futures or OTC somehow, it will create a smaller supply and hence price should rise. Bitcoin futures are cash settled, but the market makers on CME have to hedge somehow with actual spot BTC. So its basically all interconnected together.

If Paypal knew that BTC will never go any higher than $13.8K because they had a crystal ball then most likely they wouldn't hedge anything because whats the point but obviously that is not the case. So its definately hedged somehow and for every dollar of BTC sold, it should increase the price of BTC for the foreseeable future.

[philipma1957]

Actually As long as paypal manages to keep the coins correctly (no hacks) for three or four years.

It means 300 million plus people will see that btc is ‘safe’

And it is something they can buy and sell with ease.

[LoyceV]

Look do I think anyone should have 25%-100% of their BTC on PayPal alone .

Hell no.

But a few bucks worth? yes.

But why? I can only see drawbacks, no benefits. From Forbes.com:

PayPal wouldn't let users transfer their cryptocurrency into or out of PayPal

To me, this looks like the worst of both worlds: Paypal is now an exchange that only lets you deposit and withdraw fiat. You can exchange it to Bitcoin, but you can only keep in on the exchange. Combine that with the fact that Paypal is well known to freeze accounts, and I wouldn't want to use this. But I'll follow your adventures with them anyway

For all those saying that this will "increase btc adoption"

If anything, it can only increase Bitcoin speculation. There's literally nothing else you can do with your Bitcoin on Paypal.

As we know PayPal has a chargeback issue. Since you bought BTC via PayPal account, I am a little curious to know if there is still a chargeback (dispute) option for crypto when you are using crypto PayPal to PayPal.

That's probably why Paypal doesn't allow you to transfer the Bitcoin to another account directly. It goes through fiat, so they can chargeback when needed.

Further reading: Cryptocurrency on Paypal FAQ
It's not even correct though:

Litecoin: designed to be a future payment method and can be mined more quickly than Bitcoin - producing one new coin every 2.5 minutes (whereas Bitcoin produces one every 10 minutes).

Can I use Cryptocurrencies to pay or send money with PayPal?
At this time, you cannot use Crypto as a way to pay or send money on PayPal.

Can I use my Cryptocurrency balance as a funding source for my purchases?
No, not at this time.

They had a great opportunity, and they blew it

Can I use my Crypto assets as a funding source to pay merchants?
No, users cannot use Crypto as a funding instrument for commerce at this time, though this is planned for 2021.

It's as if this FAQ was written by different people who didn't read what the others were writing.

I made a Cryptocurrency purchase in error - can I cancel or reverse it?
I apologize for this situation, but there isn't a way to cancel or reverse Cryptocurrency transactions.

Wait what? First they say it's only Paypal internal, then they say it can't be reversed. This doesn't make much sense.

[Saisher]

After reading this I checked my Paypal account and there is no Cryptocurrency option there my Paypal is 5 years old and it's verified but I don't see any Cryptocurrency features or option to buy, I have not received any update coming from Paypal regarding Cryptocurrency is there country restrictions on who can use this feature?

[vapourminer]

Look do I think anyone should have 25%-100% of their BTC on PayPal alone .

Hell no.

But a few bucks worth? yes.

But why? I can only see drawbacks, no benefits. From Forbes.com:

PayPal wouldn't let users transfer their cryptocurrency into or out of PayPal

To me, this looks like the worst of both worlds: Paypal is now an exchange that only lets you deposit and withdraw fiat. You can exchange it to Bitcoin, but you can only keep in on the exchange. Combine that with the fact that Paypal is well known to freeze accounts, and I wouldn't want to use this. But I'll follow your adventures with them anyway

robinhood is the same deal. you dont get an actual address to even see it directly on chain. so nothing on the blockchain, purely an internal database. so no way to directly enter or leave the platform.

but even if paypals (or whoever is actually holding them) coins get hacked paypal will almost certainly cover them. still be a black eye though.

as for freezing accounts, sure. any "exchange" can do that. any centralized thing can be frozen. but everyone should already be aware of that.

let them learn at thier own pace.

1st step: get some even if its through a reputable exchange (yeah i know) or robinhood/paypal.

2nd step: let them watch the honey badger with some skin in the game.

3rd step: ? up to them

[philipma1957]

After reading this I checked my Paypal account and there is no Cryptocurrency option there my Paypal is 5 years old and it's verified but I don't see any Cryptocurrency features or option to buy, I have not received any update coming from Paypal regarding Cryptocurrency is there country restrictions on who can use this feature?

Could be.

My account is NJ,USA fully verified kyc it has been used for over 10 years.

I used to have a  decent ebay business so I needed PayPal. I did over 300k in sales on ebay from 2003 to 2020

@ vapourminer I am kyc at :

Coinbase
Bittrex
PayPal

Of the 3 PayPal is far easier to do kyc
Not many people want to send in photos of Drivers license and passport. PayPal does not ask for that. Thus I am support the idea they have.

But do not put all or even most of your coins in PayPal. 100usd  worth of coins is no big deal for me.

[LoyceV]

robinhood is the same deal. you dont get an actual address to even see it directly on chain. so nothing on the blockchain, purely an internal database. so no way to directly enter or leave the platform.

It feels like buying "paper gold". Weirdly enough, I am completely confident buying stocks through a broker in exactly the same way. I won't ever get them in my physical posession, and I can only sell them through the same broker I bought them from. Maybe I could get used to buying Bitcoin through a trusted broker in the same way, but it doesn't feel right to abandon all benefits it offers only to turn it into an investment.
For really long term purposes (like pensions), I'd like not to have to remember passwords or store seed key phrases.

as for freezing accounts, sure. any "exchange" can do that. any centralized thing can be frozen. but everyone should already be aware of that.

I trust my normal bank or broker a lot more than I trust Paypal. But indeed, for long-term storage, I wouldn't trust a crypto exchange more than I trust Paypal.

[bitgolden]

That is the deal here isn't it? You do not have to buy and sell, you do not need to trade, you do not need to deposit or withdraw, this could be just for pure investment and that's it. Nobody is forced to use bitcoin in paypal and it could totally get better as well with time but this is just a way to show that you could definitely make a profit from all the investments you make into bitcoin.

You do not want to use coinbase? No for binance? You dislike kucoin? No love for kraken? That is fine, there is 300+ million people who use paypal that could buy bitcoin and hold it and sell it back and use it as a great way for investment all thanks to this new deal. I highly congratulate phillipma for what he has done here and shown us how easy and simple this will be.