08/28 update below. This post was originally published on August 26
Tesla
TSLA
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The bitcoin price has swung wildly over the last few months as economic and regulatory pressures mount—though traders are now braced for a $15.5 trillion September Wall Street earthquake.
Now, after a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) insider has warned bitcoin and crypto buyers to beware of Binance, a leak has suggested Musk could turn X (Twitter) into an “updated version of PayPal
PYPL
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Tesla billionaire and X owner Elon Musk has been desperately trying to make the company formerly … [+]
Musk “continues to have conversations [with] top Wall Street executives on [the] future of X,” Fox Business News correspondent Charles Gasparino, posted to X.
“Seems to be settling, they tell me, on a new-fangled payment system, [an] updated version of PayPal. It will offer low transaction costs (as opposed to credit cards) and monetize user info.”
Earlier this month, media reports denied by Musk suggested X could add a trading platform built inside the app as part of a plan to turn the app into a financial-data giant, with Musk going on to say X will never launch a cryptocurrency of its own to rival bitcoin, ethereum, XRP
XRP
PayPal, the payments giant Musk’s X.com created when it merged with Confinity in March 2000, earlier this month launched a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin PYUSD, hoping to succeed where Meta, then Facebook, failed with its own libra-turned-diem stablecoin.
08/28 update: Despite the hype surrounding PayPal’s new stablecoin, very few people are using and holding PYUSD in self-custody wallets, according to analysts at crypto data company Nansen—something that could dent enthusiasm for X following in PayPal’s footsteps on Wall Street.
“On the surface, there’s a lack of demand from crypto users for PYUSD when other alternatives exist,” Nansen researchers wrote in a report, adding this “might be due to PayPal targeting a different demographic.”
Nansen pointed to on-chain data that showed some 90% of PYUSD is currently held in wallets controlled by the PYUSD issuer Paxos, with holdings on crypto exchanges accounting for 7% of the total supply and only 3% held by traders.
PayPal’s support for bitcoin and crypto in late 2020 helped kick off the latest bitcoin price bull run that catapulted bitcoin to almost $70,000.
“We saw PayPal introduce its stablecoin—that also acts as a stamp of approval,” Gavin Michael, the chief executive of Intercontinental Exchange-owned bitcoin custody company Bakkt, said in emailed comments.
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The bitcoin price rally this year has stalled but could be reignited by Elon Musk’s leaked plan to … [+]
Michael called BlackRock’s plans to create a long-awaited U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) a “stamp of approval,” as well. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, triggered a resurgence of Wall Street interest in bitcoin and crypto when it filed for a spot bitcoin ETF in June.
“We’re starting to see people settling transactions over stablecoins, whether they’re minted on a private or public blockchain and we like that as well because what it’s starting to show is that the technology itself is making conventional financial services better,” Michael said.
