Bullish or bearish? PayPal hosts $242M in crypto trading over 24 hours

Global payments provider PayPal has doubled its previous crypto volume record, with $242 million worth of digital assets changing hands on the platform during Jan. 11.

According to crypto market data aggregator Nomics, yesterday’s trading dwarfed PayPal’s previous volume record of $129 million recorded on Jan. 6. Since Jan. 1, daily volume has increased by 950% from $22.8.

With the spike in PayPal’s volume coming amid Bitcoin’s rally into new all-time highs, the U.S.-based payments firm appears to be gathering popularity among retail traders. Nuggets News’ Alex Saunders asserted the spike in PayPal’s volume is a likely sign of increasing adoption among retail traders, tweeting: “retail has arrived.”

Retail has arrived. @PayPal cleared $242M in crypto sales yesterday. That's nearly double the previous record. ✅ #Bitcoin #Ethereum #BullMarket pic.twitter.com/dnoPlADhla

— Alex Saunders ‍ (@AlexSaundersAU) January 12, 2021

Despite many within the crypto community praising PayPal’s entrance into crypto for driving new users toward digital assets, others have criticized PayPal for creating a “gated” crypto community that does not support withdrawal functionality — with Twitter user Toomas Zobel speculating that the surge in volume maybe have resulted from retail capitulation:

“Is there a way to view whether this was buy or sell volume? In this huge dump, it may just be retail sellers capitulating rather than creating buying pressure.”

The discussions regarding whether PayPal's volume milestone is bullish or bearish come shortly after Nexo CEO Antoni Trenchev speculated Bitcoin's recent crash from levels exceeding $40,000 was driven by retail investors rushing to realize profits.

PayPal’s crypto services are accessed via Paxos’ ItBit exchange. PayPal selected ItBit handle its crypto transactions upon launching digital asset trading services during October 2020.

PayPal is expected to offer cryptocurrency services to its 26 million merchants in the coming months, likely driving further demand for the company’s crypto services.