itBit exchange, the digital asset exchange that provides liquidity for PayPal, has seen a tremendous upswing in trading volume in the three weeks since PayPal announced the integration of digital asset payments on their platform. Owned by Paxos, PayPal’s broker-dealer, itBit has seen close to double its record trading volume since PayPal’s announcement, indicating that the PayPal digital currency platform has a high utility among its users. Below, see itBit’s recent growth in trading volume.
Source: https://nomics.com/exchanges/itbit#chart
Noting the utility that PayPal is seeing within crypto payments, this trend’s biggest takeaway is that PayPal is finally giving crypto a platform to be used for what it was created to be: a permissionless peer-to-peer transaction network. While Coinbase and other digital asset custodians have enabled users to exchange freely amongst each other, PayPal is mainstreaming crypto’s original purpose as a currency, restoring validation to crypto as a “cryptocurrency.”
While PayPal’s efforts to mainstream the use cases of digital assets is driving incredible trading volume on exchanges, their adoption is just icing on the cake for the crypto ecosystem. As Bitcoin nears its previous all-time high, there is no stopping the increasing pace of innovation and adoption of blockchain technology as a pathway to financial freedom.
By Liam McDonald
