PayPal Explores A Stablecoin After Developers Discover It In Code

PayPal explores a stablecoin after a developer caught it in a code, months after the company enabled Bitcoin purchases so let’s read further in today’s latest crypto news.

Paypal explores a stablecoin and considers crypto as a technology that can supplant centralized payment services because it is able to make transactions much cheaper and cut out the middlemen. These legacy services are looking to incorporate crypto into toolkits just as PayPal does. The company confirmed that it is working on its own stablecoin after a developer discovered the language about a “PayPal Coin” in the iPhone app. The company told Bloomberg the code was a part of a hackathon and will not be representative necessarily of the final version. Senior VP of crypto and digital currencies Jose Fernandez Da Ponte said:

“We are exploring a stablecoin. If and when we seek to move forward, we will, of course, work closely with relevant regulators.”

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that maintain a steady value by being backed by other assets. Tether and USDC as the two biggest stablecoins by market cap are designed to be worth $1 at all times. They are useful for navigating blockchain-based platforms which connect to traditional currencies and maintain their value so people can shift their portfolios. For a major company, PayPal already entered deeply into the crypto space. In late 2020, it started enabling users to buy and hold digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. It extended that to its subisidary Venmo and created a checkout feature for crypto.

As a part of the strategy, it partnered with Paxos that issues the Pax dollar or USDP stablecoin. The USDP market cap stands at over $1.05 billion or up by $500,000 last year according to Coingecko. USDT has a market cap of $79.2 billion up from $23.5 billion a year ago. PayPal has a market cap of $220 billion and its own stablecoin could be quite valuable as well.

As recently reported, According to a new report by market intelligence platform Blockdata, Bitcoin processed more USD Value than Paypal did and it could soon surpass the one of Mastercard as it already processed 27% of the value. While this represents a huge milestone for the crypto industry, the value pales dramatically against that of Mastercard and Visa with the other leading payment companies in the world. According to the data, the two credit card giants processed around $1.8 trillion and $3.2 trillion worth of transactions in the past quarter respectively.