PayPal is hiring crypto and blockchain experts as speculation grows that the global fiat payment service will ultimately offer direct cryptocurrency services for its 305 million users. 

The job postings are publicly available on the firm’s careers board.

The first listing of note is for a job titled “Technical Lead - Crypto Engineer.” It says that this candidate will be responsible for “new initiatives for PayPal global with a focus on agility, time-to-market and innovation. The role includes designing, developing and maintaining key crypto products/features targeted towards availability, performance and scalability of PayPal services.”

Another is for a blockchain research engineer to work within the company’s research group: “A newly formed group within the Strategic Technology Enablement team chartered with establishing expertise and opinions on emerging blockchain technologies and their potential uses within PayPal.”

Many within the crypto community will take a sense of satisfaction from the rumours.

“PayPal has made a name for itself in recent years as a crypto critic, declining to entertain the idea of supporting it,” according to Coin Telegraph, a cryptocurrency news website.

“At the same time, technical problems and the pitfalls of being a fiat intermediary means that PayPal has, in fact, become a subliminal advertisement for Bitcoin’s benefits.” 

Should the speculation be proven correct, the price of Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency, could be expected to jump further, say analysts.  As of Wednesday morning, it has gained 1% in the last 24 hours.

Bitcoin is, says Coin Desk, “by far outperforming traditional global equities markets, up 38% in 2020.”