PayPal confirmed on Jan. 8 it is “exploring a stablecoin” that could be called PayPal Coin after a developer found evidence of such a stablecoin within the source code of the company’s iPhone app.
PayPal senior vice president of crypto and digital currencies Jose Fernandez da Ponte said at the time that if the company plans to move forward with the stablecoin, it will do so while working closely with relevant regulators — an approach that could help the fintech firm avoid the wrath of United States senators that doomed Meta’s Diem cryptocurrency project.
The company has clarified that the source code found on its iPhone app was developed in an internal hackathon. When Cointelegraph contacted PayPal to learn more, a spokesperson confirmed the previous reporting but did not offer any additional commentary.
The potential impact of a PayPal stablecoin in payments overall and in the cryptocurrency industry is hard to estimate, and while some experts see the firm’s move as an extremely positive one for the space, others believe the stablecoin would be more of the same.
PayPal itself has well over 350 million active users and already lets users in the U.S. and United Kingdom buy, sell and hold Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) while enabling payments in these crypto assets. While it’s unclear how many of PayPal’s users have paid with cryptocurrency, it’s well-known that stablecoins are mostly a tool used to trade and take advantage of opportunities in the decentralized finance space.