As customers buy more BTC than miners create, PayPal’s stock hits record high

PayPal’s stock reached a new all-time high as the firm’s customers are reportedly buying Bitcoin (BTC) faster than it can be mined.

According to a Dec. 14 report by investment news outlet Investor’s Business Daily, PayPal Holdings’ stock has been rising “since it joined rival Square (SQ) in allowing customers to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency Bitcoin.”

PayPal only began allowing U.S. customers to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash on Nov. 12. In 2021, it will expand that service to its whole 350 million strong international customer base, president and CEO Dan Schulman said. That will vastly expanding the number of potential mainstream retail investors.

PayPal’s stock hit an all-time high of 223.16 in intraday trading on Monday before backing up to close at 220.79, up 3.1%. Currently, it trades at just over $220.

Bill Barhydt, the CEO and co-founder of mobile crypto-finance app Abra claimed in a Dec. 14 tweet that PayPal’s current role in the Bitcoin market is even bigger than previously believed.

As Modern Consensus reported at the end of November as Bitcoin hit its new all-time high, an analysis suggests that PayPal was “already buying almost 70% of the new supply of Bitcoins” on Nov. 20. Barhydt said he believed “PayPal (alone) now fulfills more Bitcoin demand than the amount of Bitcoin created daily.” 

In addition, the late November analysis also estimated that customers of Square’s Cash App were already buying around 40% of all newly-issued Bitcoin. Furthermore, Barhydt said that he expects other major developments to take place in the space next year:

“2021 (or 22) will highly likely see a retail Bitcoin ETF. Demand will likely go up 100x at that point.”

That’s on top of mainstream investors like MicroStrategy, which just raised $650 million to buy more bitcoins—which will put its total investment north of $1.1 billion—and 168-year-old insurer MassMutual which plunked down $100 million for BTC this week.

The IBD article predicts PayPal’s stock will continue to rise, saying its “penetration of total retail spending to continue growing this holiday shopping season during the coronavirus pandemic.”

That’s key, as “a recent PYPL survey revealed 54% of PYPL users have interest in its crypto offerings and we believe there has been strong interest in demand thus far,” Deutsche Bank analyst Bryan Keane told IBD. He added:

“Even more powerful is the frequency of visits to the PYPL commerce portal from crypto users, which will lead to higher customer engagement and more monetizable transactions.”