PayPal president is fascinated by Bitcoin, says company is ‘thinking about’ including the virtual currency

PayPal currently doesn’t have much of a relationship with the virtual currency Bitcoin, but that may soon change. The company’s president David Marcus seems to be very interested in the virtual currency, and says his company is “thinking about” potentially including it one day, according to a Bloomberg video interview published on Wednesday.

Bitcoin wasn’t the main topic of the interview, but the Bloomberg interviewer decided to ask Marcus about it out of the blue. Here’s a transcript of the PayPal president’s response:

So I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at it, and it’s truly fascinating actually: the way that the currency’s been designed, and the way that inflation is built in to pay for miners, and all that is truly fascinating. I think that for us at PayPal, it’s just a question whether Bitcoin will make its way to PayPal’s funding instrument or not. We’re kinda thinking about it.

You can watch the clip for yourself here (the Bitcoin section starts at 2:55).

It’s worth noting that Marcus may simply just be playing his cards safe: he’s interested in the virtual currency because many people are at the moment. It would be ignorant to discount it from the get-go, just as it would be ignorant to immediately add support for it.

Whether PayPal jumps on the Bitcoin bandwagon or not, Marcus is showing his company is on top of the “virtual currency revolution,” if you will. Bitcoin may end up being the first popular digital alternative to money as we currently know it, or it may completely fizzle out in a few months’ time, but either way PayPal needs to stay in the loop if it wants to keep playing ball.

See also – Bitcoin exchange Bitfloor is no more, has halted trading and promises to return user funds and Here we go again: Top Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox taken down for hours by ‘another strong DDoS attack’

Top Image Credit: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/GettyImages