• General
  • October 23, 2020
  • 4 minutes read

PayPal Eyes BitGo Buy

  Dan Schulman, CEO, PayPal. Photo credit: Kevin Moloney/Fortune, licensed under Creative Commons Payments giant PayPal is considering acquiring cryptocurrency companies…

 

Dan Schulman, CEO, PayPal.
Photo credit: Kevin Moloney/Fortune, licensed under Creative Commons


Payments giant PayPal is considering acquiring cryptocurrency companies to bolster its business in the space and has particularly held talks to acquire Bitcoin custodian BitGo, according to a report [paywalled] by Bloomberg. BitGo is a company that helps institutional investors to securely store cryptocurrency. It’s known to have raised about $70 million in funding and was valued at $170 million from its most recent financing round (PitchBook data).

PayPal just recently announced that it’ll begin letting customers buy and sell cryptocurrency on its platform, with the payments giant planning to roll out that option in the US over the next few years and reach a full rollout early next year. Such a move signals PayPal looking to dig deeper into the cryptocurrency space and acquiring other companies to do that seems like a good strategy.

BitGo as a company was founded in 2013. It offers digital wallets that require multiple signatures to execute transactions as well as offline vaults for storing cryptocurrencies. Institutional investors who usually hold large amounts of cryptocurrency adopt services like BitGo to ensure safety and security. BitGo was one of the first crypto companies to focus on the needs of institutional investors and as such made a good name for itself in the space.

BitGo competes with other crypto companies such as Coinbase, Achain, Curv, and its likes. The company, based out of Palo Alto, California, is backed by investors including Goldman Sachs, Redpoint Ventures, Craft Ventures, and Digital Currency Group.

The price point that PayPal is willing to pay for BitGo isn’t known.



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *