Bitcoin buying and selling volumes at PayPal have increased 5x since November, up from about $20 million to now more than $100 million (pictured above).
Revealed by itBit, PayPal’s provider, volumes now are up 10x since before PayPal launched, increasing from $10 million to $113 million for today.
That shows significant demand at the global platform with some 340 million users just weeks after it launched bitcoin buying and selling.
It is expected to soon begin rolling out bitcoin payments to its 26 million merchants, something that should make paying with bitcoin or eth ubiquitos.
That has contributed to a bull run with bitcoin’s price crossing $35,000, a new all time high, as these PayPal volumes show it’s not just institutional investors driving the price, but the general population too.
These are paper bitcoins in as far as you can’t actually withdraw them from the platform, but each purchase on PayPal is fully backed with bitcoin custodied by Paxos.
So making this an option for people who don’t want to deal with bitcoin itself while having an exposure to it.
It also makes it an easier way to enter the bitcoin market for those that already have a PayPal account as they don’t have to open a new one at Coinbase.
“When PayPal went live, volume [at itBit] started exploding,” Dan Morehead of Pantera Capital said. “The increase in itBit volume implies that within two months of going live, PayPal is already buying more than 100% of the new supply of bitcoins.”
At this rate, PayPal is nearing $1 billion in weekly volumes, with it doubling recently from the usual $40 million daily volumes to $80 million.
As can be seen above, an upwards trend can be noticed, suggesting more and more are buying bitcoin through PayPal as bitcoin opens to a new market.
