The eBay Virtual Currency payments rumours began with a couple of banners at Consensus, the annual gathering of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry and now have exploded across the crypto world being reported as hard news. A telegram account, with the user name @PatronsofTheMoon, posted photos of the eBay banners which said ‘Virtual Currency. It’s happening on eBay’.
"Leaked from Consensus, eBay possibly announcing the support of cryptocurrencies on their website." – @PatronsOfTheMoon Telegram. #share #bitcoin #cryptocurrency pic.twitter.com/xqbpdysUic
— wolf (@ImNotTheWolf) May 12, 2019
This isn’t the first time that eBay Virtual Currency payments have been considered with Devin Wenig being quoted as being “very open” to Bitcoin as far back as 2014, but to date nothing has transpired.
Of course a banner at a conference isn’t a statement of intent… until you wonder why eBay is a sponsor for an event like Consensus. They could be merely interested in the blockchain but the likelihood would appear in that case their banner wouldn’t have stated ‘Virtual Currency’ is happening on eBay… Although eBay do allow the sale of virtual currency and have done so since 2014, so it could just be promotion of their virtual currency categories but that would be an expensive sponsorship dea.
At the same time the industry is rife with speculation that eBay could plump for UTRUST as their crypto partner. UTRUST snagged former PayPal and eBay exec Sanja Kon as VP of Global Partnerships so there’s almost certainly an ongoing relationship between the two companies, even if it’s just on the level of ex colleagues talking shop. UTRUST also announced this week that they’ve gained SRO Approval to operate a cryptocurrency blockchain service in Switzerland. Switzerland is also the country where eBay’s European headquarters are situated.
Even eBay Virtual Currency payments are about to be announced (and there’s no real reason why eBay wouldn’t as UTRUST or another solution would be able to instantly convert funds into hard currency), it’s unlikely sellers would ever see eBay Virtual Currency payments – Almost certainly it would be built into eBay Payments which is in a small scale US launch and will be coming to Germany later this year and sellers would never get to see their buyer’s funding source.
Will we see eBay Virtual Currency payments at some point in the future? Almost certainly. Will it be with UTRUST in the near future? We’ll report back if we hear more.
