Venmo to Allow Customers to Buy, Sell and Hold Cryptocurrencies

PayPal on Tuesday will begin allowing select customers of its Venmo app to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies as consumers increasingly look for ways to pile into the digital assets. Bloomberg reports: The firm will make it available to all the app's users, who number more than 70 million, within the next few weeks. For now, Venmo is allowing customers to trade in just four types of cryptocurrency: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash. Users will also have the ability to share their cryptocurrency purchases on the Venmo feed.

"We do think some customers will certainly want to share this fun experience," Darrell Esch, senior vice president and general manager of the Venmo app at PayPal, said in an interview. "They can share with their friends and community that they've taken the step into this space."

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry if I don't want to be the last one to join a ponzi scheme, but you don't need to take my refusal so personally.

Re:

[Powercntrl]

While its value may be a bit disconnected from what it actually costs to dig it up out of the ground and refine it, gold actually has uses. Hell, you can even just wear the stuff as an adornment if you truly couldn't find a buyer.

All cryptocurrency is just buying stock in the collective delusion that owning a number in a peer-to-peer database has value. Now, before some idiot comes along and says "Duh-hur, but the money in your bank account is just a number in a database too!", let me make it clear the nu

Re:

[KingBenny]

the only thing that matters is the money it generates , your proverbial local fed doesnt have to print that out of thin air, it just comes out of other thin air and leads to a whole lot of people who gather a quick 100 million to start up the next thing. Wearing a gold chain is just as much status as owning a number on a blockchain and having gold bars in the attic probably doesnt do much either. It would be nice though, if fintek could get its head out of its ass and start creating jobs instead of narcissi

Re:

[KingBenny]

they joy of slashdot since day one : no censorship : no corrections once committed ... before i would have added something like "all money that comes in stacks above a billion should get an expiry date unless its locked and committed into a business plan. Its the hodling thats the problem mostly and the whales who feel like the guttertrash should spend more and save less while they raise another quick 100 million.
if you had that there would be a lot less shyte around the globe and as far as im convinced t

Re:

[KingBenny]

slashdot , the original immutable ledger ... the dark one would have added something about incremental recurring tissue damage to vital organs that increases the chance to die on every run through the game of 2020 but we, of Janes Underground, think its EXCITING to see how everyone acts like its all over when this week was the worst week ever since the start on a global scale.
that's AWESOME ! ... yes, you see ? no more intelligent remarks
lightweight entertainment only

Re:

[AnonyMouseCowWard]

I agree with asset != investment. BTC is interesting, because it's a virtual asset; not only does it not produce an economic output itself, it also cannot be used for anything, unlike traditional assets.

The reason you could say it's a pyramid scheme is BTC, despite its creators best intentions, doesn't work as a currency. Right now it's just an asset, and the transactions done with it are similar to bartering or swapping gold bars. At the end of the day, people transfer BTC back to $ (or any fiat currency

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

What matters is the monetary premium. The monetary premium is the main economic value of Gold, Arts, real estates, and now stocks. Unlike with the classical Gold Standard, the monetary premium is not concentrated anymore at the money level. The reason is simple, our today currency is defective. Our currency is unable to move efficiently wealth across time.

Money in the free market is a winner take all situation. Gold is the historical reference and was the best for 1000+ years. The first question is why Go

Re:

[AnonyMouseCowWard]

What's monetary premium? I googled and it seems a buzzword, generally meaning "the value people attach to things that can be used as stores of wealth", only used by crypto adepts. Is that what you mean by it?

In which case, agree, that's the main economic value of gold and collectibles (though not the only one); it's not the case for real estate, which you can rent out and live in and allows you to not pay rent, and it's not the case for stocks, that represent a legal share of a company from which you're o

Re:

[Kartu]

Anti-bitcoin activists promoting dogecoin

I promote "stop being part of a" either Ponzi Scheme [wikipedia.org] or Financial Bubble [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

A ponzi applies only to products sold as an investment, because, in a ponzi you are paying the interest with the money of others. This is exactly what our current system is doing. A fund, or a bank, did a bad investment, this is not an issue, the Fed prints more money, and they are saved again, in the meantime the saving of others are depreciated through inflation.

Bitcoin is the anti-ponzi, because with Bitcoin you can't play with the rules. You have it, or you don't have it, but you can't print it. Bitco

Re:

[sabbede]

Crypto currencies ARE sold as an investment. Coinbase is running commercials to do just that.

In a Ponzi scheme, interest is not a factor. The apparent return on investment is what new investors provide. The money in the fund isn't actually invested in anything or lent out (lending is where interest would come in), the growth is entirely the result of new investors coming in (or lies). If the scheme has $10,000 in it and someone new invests $100, call it a 10% ROI for whoever put in the $10k.

And that

Skipping it

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll probably be skipping this one. I still have $20 worth of "Bitcoin" I purchased with Paypal. I say "Bitcoin" because it's not actually Bitcoin. With Coinbase and many other sites, you can purchase Bitcoin and transfer it off, not so with Paypal. There's this weird trend for a few of the newer platforms to do something similar... this is a pretty bad idea. Skip it unless you can actually transfer it... that's one of the properties that exists with real Bitcoin (and most other Cryptocurrencies).

Hitmen

[Mark4ST]

I never buy bricks of heroin or hire hitmen so I have no need for this.

But will you be able to spend them?

[KC0A]

Paypal previously announced Bitcoin support, but as far as I know you can only convert between dollars and Bitcoin. You can't make Bitcoin purchases.