Payments Giant PayPal Held Over $600,000,000 Worth of Crypto Last Quarter, Mostly in Bitcoin and Ethereum

Payments giant PayPal held hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto assets last quarter, most of it being Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

According to PayPal’s annual financial report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the payments platform held about $604 million worth of digital assets, including $291 million worth of BTC and $250 million worth of ETH, in Q4 2022.

The records also indicate that PayPal held $63 million of other unnamed digital assets. According to PayPal, it held onto crypto assets as a means of benefiting its customers.

“Due to the unique risks associated with cryptocurrencies, including technological, legal, and regulatory risks, we recognize a crypto asset safeguarding liability to reflect our obligation to safeguard the crypto assets held for the benefit of our customers, which is recorded in accrued expenses and other current liabilities on our consolidated balance sheet.”

Last December, PayPal announced a partnership with crypto firm ConsenSys to integrate PayPal into MetaMask, one of the most popular crypto wallets in the world.

At the time, MetaMask’s product manager Lorenzo Santos said the collaboration between the two firms would allow MetaMask users to not only easily buy and sell crypto but also interact with Web 3 applications, such as non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, and blockchain-based games.

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