Recently there has been speculation that Amazon may be on the brink of accepting cryptocurrency payments, via the likes of Bitcoin, for goods on the marketplace.
And the latest moves suggest that it is at least on the radar at Amazon because they’ve been on a shopping spree for domain names. Amazon has registered three new cryptocurrency-related domains, according to the blog at DomainNameWire. The domains are amazonethereum.com, amazoncryptocurrency.com, amazoncryptocurrencies.com. Apparently Amazon already owns the “amazonbitcoin.com” domain name.
As ever, Amazon has been tight lipped about any plans it has for accepting any cryptocurrency as a payment method. Indeed, Amazon Pay Vice President Patrick Gauthier said last month that Amazon had no plans to accept cryptocurrency because there hasn’t been sufficient demand yet.
There have been rumours in the past, including about eBay accepting Bitcoin, but there hasn’t been any movement. Indeed in 2014 we reported that eBay was “actively considering” accepting it as a payment method and that was pretty much the last we heard of the idea.
It seems most likely that Amazon is simply protecting its brand name by speculatively buying up related domain names it fears that others could misuse. It makes good sense. Don’t forget that the amazonbitcoin domain was bought over three years and nothing has happened there.
It strikes us that the world of virtual currencies is one which concerns tech journalists and geeks predominantly, but it isn’t something which has yet to sufficiently impact the popular consciousness enough yet for Amazon to consider them as a payment method. Yet.
2 Responses
Some years ago in the days of just com, many domain names beginning ‘easy’ had been reserved by Easyjet, obviously some got used as they expanded into hire cars and the like
They may not be interested in accepting it as payment, but perhaps Amazon are considering moving into bitcoing mining or marketplacing?
I’d be surprised if Amazon aren’t already mining quietly somewhere, with their expertise and hardware it’s a no-brainer, if the company isn’t mining officially then one of their staff are probably using the hardware downtime to mine their own.
– it’s like a company that makes, manages, and leases out earth-moving and drilling equipment, with their regional office sat on top of a large gold deposit, simply declining to extract any gold. why on earth wouldn’t you?
if Amazon position themselves now, while the banks are still steering clear of crypto-currency, they may just make themselves the de-facto exchange service.
there’s been a lot of news about crypto-currency exchanges being hacked, any user’s worst nightmare since it’s untraceable. if Amazon were to fill that void i imagine they’d be pretty popular with users looking for a secure ‘big’ name to bank with.
I’m sure Amazon would love to get into the financial sector (every large co does), but it’s probably not viable or easy for them to take that leap now, so this could eventually turn into ‘Amazon Finance’ via the back door.