[2020-10-23]PayPal is eyeing a BitGo purchase

[Daltonik]

Payment company PayPal is considering options for absorbing cryptocurrency companies to expand its product line. Among them is the BitGo custodian, Bloomberg reports, citing knowledgeable sources.

The deal may take place within the next few weeks. The publication notes that in the event of a breakdown in negotiations, PayPal may switch attention to another company from the industry.
Both companies did not comment on the publication. Investors in BitGo include Goldman Sachs, Digital Currency Group, and Galaxy Digital Ventures. According to Crunchbase, by April 1, 2019, BitGo had raised $69.5 million through five rounds of funding.

Coinshares development Director Meltem Demirors suggested on CNBC that one of the next stages of PayPal in the digital asset space will be the release of Its own cryptocurrency.
https://twitter.com/CNBCFastMoney/status/1319033981153775616

[squatter]

Payment company PayPal is considering options for absorbing cryptocurrency companies to expand its product line. Among them is the BitGo custodian, Bloomberg reports, citing knowledgeable sources.

This is a big deal. BitGo is a giant in the institutional custody space, probably the largest after Coinbase. Some of the world's biggest exchanges are their clients. They also launched an institutional trading service earlier this year, although I'm not sure how much traction it has gained.

With PayPal's existing customer and merchant base, they're already positioning themselves to be a giant in the Bitcoin exchange and payment processing industries. If they absorb BitGo on top, they could be right up there with Coinbase in terms of overall industry influence and market share, almost overnight.

I don't love it, if I'm being honest.

[gentlemand]

I don't love it, if I'm being honest.

At least it would be competition of a sort? Coinbase have been looking like they were well on their way to being a standalone behemoth which isn't healthy either. Having said that I would basically prefer it to be anyone other than Paypal.

We also have no idea as to the depth of their commitment to this. Coinbase came out of this from nothing. Paypal are the direct opposite. It could be something they decide may never work for them after less time than we expect. Many others have reached the same conclusion, usually with outrageous prematurity.

[philipma1957]

I don't love it, if I'm being honest.

At least it would be competition of a sort? Coinbase have been looking like they were well on their way to being a standalone behemoth which isn't healthy either. Having said that I would basically prefer it to be anyone other than Paypal.

We also have no idea as to the depth of their commitment to this. Coinbase came out of this from nothing. Paypal are the direct opposite. It could be something they decide may never work for them after less time than we expect. Many others have reached the same conclusion, usually with outrageous prematurity.

WHAT do you think adaption is going to be like?

VISA
DISCOVER
MASTERCARD
AMEX
PAYPAL

are the major players here.

The best case is they all come in and BTC whales as a blended product.

The worst case is they all come in and kill it off.

there is no in-between in the long run.  at least I see it that way.

BTW I have often been very wrong.

[gentlemand]

WHAT do you think adaption is going to be like?

Ooh. That's a big question.

What I wonder about all of these companies is whether they're patient enough and whether they've taken the time to understand or anticipate the course it's going to take. I don't really think anyone knows still and if they try to mould their interpretation into something they're familiar with it simply won't work and will wander off into a dead end.

I absolutely don't believe they can kill it off. It's a big old world and in large swathes of it those companies are nowhere. Where they are prevalent the disenchantment with conventional finance is not going to shrink.

My guess is anyone who sets off thinking it's going to become a means of payment any time soon is going to to fail. Human nature doesn't buy something to buy something. It also doesn't want to spend what it thinks may be worth more tomorrow.

With that out the window I'm not really sure what's left for them beyond facilitating buying, selling and storing. Paypal at least have kicked off with that and kept quieter about merchant stuff.

Maybe that's enough but I still think many of them are stuck in an intranet mind set and will remain so right up until they throw in the towel.

[hatshepsut93]

The worst case is they all come in and kill it off.

How would they do it? Bitcoin is not a proof of stake shitcoin, where owning coins gives you voting power, and even mining doesn't give you voting power, and strictly speaking, there's no such thing as voting power in Bitcoin, even node count doesn't count as such. At worst they'll try to mess with it in a way SegWit2x tried, which I'd like to remind everyone, was backed by big names like Coinbase and Bitmain and BitPay. But Bitcoin users rejected it, so they have failed. If PayPal and all these big players will try to takeover Bitcoin, the Bitcoin community will simply reject it.

[philipma1957]

The worst case is they all come in and kill it off.

How would they do it? Bitcoin is not a proof of stake shitcoin, where owning coins gives you voting power, and even mining doesn't give you voting power, and strictly speaking, there's no such thing as voting power in Bitcoin, even node count doesn't count as such. At worst they'll try to mess with it in a way SegWit2x tried, which I'd like to remind everyone, was backed by big names like Coinbase and Bitmain and BitPay. But Bitcoin users rejected it, so they have failed. If PayPal and all these big players will try to takeover Bitcoin, the Bitcoin community will simply reject it.

they could .

but I prefer they don’t.

[Sithara007]

PayPal is the first corporation to realize that cryptocurrency will be a big thing in the future, especially in the finance sector. BitGo is not a very large sized firm, and I suspect they are going after it as a test run. If the acquisition is successful, then they may acquire larger crypto businesses. And one more thing. I won't be surprised if PayPal acquires one or two major cryptocurrency exchanges in the distant future, and merge them with their main platform.

[acquafredda]

If we take the funding of developers and this paypal news into perspective I think I could understand what are philipma1957 main concerns. It seems inevitable now that those financial behemots will want to sit at the bitcoin table: we can only do one thing to keep them afar which is to hold our coins, taking them off the exchanges and let the price really reflect bitcoin's real value.
Let them pay those coins a lot: remember its only a finite number.

[slaman29]

Basically, any big corporate probably considers Bitgo as a first option, I guess. I mean, it seems that every big corporate company who ever gets into crypto seems to partner with bitgo.

I wonder why they don't just use their own custody, and then just take out insurance. Why pay someone else to do the same thing I wonder?

[malevolent]

I wonder why they don't just use their own custody, and then just take out insurance. Why pay someone else to do the same thing I wonder?

It must have made more sense to them financially or in the long run, buy someone else's solution (maybe IP?), rather than experiment with reinventing the wheel and potentially lose time and/or money.

[gentlemand]

Basically, any big corporate probably considers Bitgo as a first option, I guess. I mean, it seems that every big corporate company who ever gets into crypto seems to partner with bitgo.

I wonder why they don't just use their own custody, and then just take out insurance. Why pay someone else to do the same thing I wonder?

No custodian is insured as far as I know. No insurer will do it. Certain places like Coinbase have insurance but only for their hot wallets.

That being the case the only insurance you can get is buying somewhere that already knows how to store coins securely.

[sunsilk]

I wonder why they don't just use their own custody, and then just take out insurance. Why pay someone else to do the same thing I wonder?

They are still new in the crypto game.

It's much considerable if they'll just purchase a known bitcoin-service company and establish themselves with it. These how a huge company works, if they are going to rebrand their company it will just cost the same amount or even more because they need to create a process on their own but they haven't acquired any new partner or company.

But by doing this, it's gain for them and it's easier to continue the business.

[buwaytress]

I'm not sure a lot of BitGo clients would be happy with this. Can't rattle off the names of all the companies I know who've taken BitGo solutions but some of them are pretty anti-banking (though ironically, willing to trust a company with vaults in mountains with their private keys) but will certainly be interesting to see how PayPal rebrands or redirects its marketing for *this* pivot.

No custodian is insured as far as I know. No insurer will do it. Certain places like Coinbase have insurance but only for their hot wallets.

That being the case the only insurance you can get is buying somewhere that already knows how to store coins securely.

BitGo (and in turn, their clients) makes quite a big deal of them being insured by LLoyds.

[gentlemand]

BitGo (and in turn, their clients) makes quite a big deal of them being insured by LLoyds.

You learn summat every day. In that case I wonder why Coinbase haven't pursued something similar. And I wonder how much more than $100 million Bitgo have under their control.

[Harlot]

This is a big deal. BitGo is a giant in the institutional custody space, probably the largest after Coinbase. Some of the world's biggest exchanges are their clients. They also launched an institutional trading service earlier this year, although I'm not sure how much traction it has gained.

With PayPal's existing customer and merchant base, they're already positioning themselves to be a giant in the Bitcoin exchange and payment processing industries. If they absorb BitGo on top, they could be right up there with Coinbase in terms of overall industry influence and market share, almost overnight.

I don't love it, if I'm being honest.

Right now really don't have any choice and also we can't really do nothing about it, I have the same feeling when Binance has been taking over crypto companies left and right and most recently CMC but them monopolizing the market is something that we can't really do anything about it. My perspective on Paypal entering the crypto industry is they might be a game changer when it comes to mass adoption as long as they have a plan on integrating Bitcoin in their main payment system, if they manage to pull of this kind of feature I think it will get a lot of new interest as well as the existing ones to use their cryptocurrencies more as the acceptance of Paypal as a payment method is globally recognized.

[malevolent]

No custodian is insured as far as I know. No insurer will do it. Certain places like Coinbase have insurance but only for their hot wallets.

Googling 'bitcoin vault insurance' does yield some results, e.g. Ledger Vault with $150M insurance fron Marsh/LLoyd's, crypto.com is insured for $360M, Gemini is insured for $200M and Bittrex is insured $300M. The latter two have the same underwriters as Ledger. Xapo and Elliptic also used to have some sort of insurance but I think that may now be a thing of the past.

[bbc.reporter]

Payment company PayPal is considering options for absorbing cryptocurrency companies to expand its product line. Among them is the BitGo custodian, Bloomberg reports, citing knowledgeable sources.

This is a big deal. BitGo is a giant in the institutional custody space, probably the largest after Coinbase. Some of the world's biggest exchanges are their clients. They also launched an institutional trading service earlier this year, although I'm not sure how much traction it has gained.

With PayPal's existing customer and merchant base, they're already positioning themselves to be a giant in the Bitcoin exchange and payment processing industries. If they absorb BitGo on top, they could be right up there with Coinbase in terms of overall industry influence and market share, almost overnight.

I don't love it, if I'm being honest.

Agreed. This will begin to be more dangerous for our freedom on the internet when more people begin to depend on 3rd parties to hold and use their bitcoins. This will give them the power to terminate you from making your online payments which bitcoin was supposed to fix.

Do not deposit or buy your bitcoins in Paypal.

[buwaytress]

You learn summat every day. In that case I wonder why Coinbase haven't pursued something similar. And I wonder how much more than $100 million Bitgo have under their control.

I remember even back in 2018/19 when Japan began kicking in regs for exchanges there and also S Korea last year, they were a few old insurers lining up to cut deals (licensing would have required partial insurance), and Gemini as well I remember had been in long negotiations (and malevolent's post suggests they were successful), so yeah, them big boys got their finger in pies.

There've been some discussions on that $100M insurance and I recall some claims that it's -per- instance of claim, but that is not nearly enough for a single hack that steals everything, if it's true that they collectively custody for over $1 billion in 2017 (assuming that was at ATH, and they haven't taken on more, that's still $650M today). Still anybody's guess what happens if every Bitgo customer requests a withdrawal.

[DooMAD]

WHAT do you think adaption is going to be like?

I think it's going to look like people posting endless topics here on the forums something along the lines of:

"Bitcoin sucks because PayPal froze my account"

And then a thousand replies completely lacking in sympathy telling them that it's their own stupid fault for doing it wrong.


Calling it now.