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Amazon Set to Accept Bitcoins, Develop Crypto Strategy
While there are big companies that do accept cryptocurrencies as payments, Amazon is not one of them, perhaps because of its unpredictable volatility. Yet the company is about to change its attitude towards cryptocurrencies and even plans to develop a special cryptocurrency and blockchain strategy.
Business Insider has found an Amazon job listing that seeks a leader who will develop the retailer's Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy as well as a product roadmap. The future employee of Amazon will be a part of The Amazon Payment Acceptance & Experience Team is responsible for 'how Amazon’s customers pay on Amazon’s sites and through Amazon’s services around the globe,' which pretty much implies that one of the world's biggest retailers will start accepting cryptocurrency as payments sometimes in the future.
Indeed, Amazon has confirmed to Business Insider that it is going to accept cryptocurrencies, but did not reveal when exactly this is set to happen.
"We are inspired by the innovation happening in the cryptocurrency space and are exploring what this could look like on Amazon," a statement by Amazon reads. "We believe the future will be built on new technologies that enable modern, fast, and inexpensive payments, and hope to bring that future to Amazon customers as soon as possible."
Amazon used to be pretty sceptic about cryptocurrencies back in 2017 due to lack of demand, but as more people start using cryptocurrencies to keep their savings or make investments, there are obviously enough parties interested in using various digital coins for payments and avoid their conversion to real money.
What remains to be seen is how Amazon plans to mitigate volatility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin that can fluctuate significantly even during a week. Perhaps, the company will simply convert Bitcoins to real money quickly. Alternatively, it may attempt to make some additional profits by waiting till a digital currency goes up in price.
But no matter what Amazon will do with cryptocurrencies it gets as payments, the very idea that such a large retailer will accept cryptocurrencies increases their value and makes some of the holders richer.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
I feel sometimes companies accept cryptocurrency to bump up the prices of the crypto itself. Behind the scenes, you really don't know if the CEO have a vested interest in the likes of Bitcoin. Instead of waiting for their yearly bonus, cryptocurrency can make a rich even richer in a short span of time. All you need is some catalyst, i.e. good news of companies/ countries accepting, in order for the value to appreciate a healthy percentage in a day.
Haha, too bad for those who say nay to crypto.....
Told you all that value is created by man. Whatever intrinsic valuve, backing etc... all doesn't matter. As long as pple recognise it, there is valuve, pple don't, it has no value.
Crypto will always have value because its world wide. IT will take a coordinated effort from the world to ban crypto, then it will have no value.
This is a very misleading headline. Digital currency and blockchain are not just cryto, and if you read the Amazon statement they said nothing about accepting tulips as payments. What is happening is that all large economy central banks have been working on digitizing money supply with China just launched its own digital renminbi tests. ECB is supposedly not far behind with digital euro. These are real monies and will remake existing financial transfer and payment systems. I doubt Bezos is looking to market manipulate Bitcoin like Elan Musk but rather the end game is to displace the likes of VISA, Master and Paypal, or even bank intermediaries.
