PayPal was holding $604 million worth of customer crypto as of January 1, about $80 million less than at the end of September, before the collapse of the infamous FTX crypto exchange.
The data is contained in the company’s annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Almost 90% of the total volume of cryptocurrency is stored in bitcoins (BTC) and ether (ETH). At the end of September 2022, PayPal held $690 million of client crypto assets in its accounts.
The unexpected collapse of FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, occurred in early November last year. The owner, American Sam Bankman-Fried, went from being a philanthropist and venture capitalist with a capital of $16 billion to bankrupt and involved in a whole bunch of lawsuits in a week.
PayPal has been allowing customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies since October 2020. The service does not charge fees when buying, selling or storing cryptocurrencies. All that is required is that the user has a valid account.
In December, the company announced its readiness to provide cryptocurrency services to users of the crypto service in Luxembourg in the coming days.
Earlier, Trend Micro analysts warned PayPal users about a new wave of account fraud used by businesses associated with blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Fraudsters impersonate payment system operators and try to get access to confidential data from the user in person.
