Buying and selling Bitcoin through PayPal is now easier than ever. The online payments company made a big push into cryptocurrency last year, and now users in the US can buy, sell, hold, and checkout with bitcoin, ethereum, bitcoin cash, and litecoin. They can also use the company’s popular Venmo app to do so, and they don’t need a separate cryptocurrency wallet or an exchange account.
However, the company still isn’t giving its customers direct ownership of their coins. Instead, they are “custodians” for the cryptocurrencies they hold on PayPal’s platform, and this fact has been a major point of criticism among cryptocurrency investors who believe that holding cryptocurrencies at centralized exchanges puts their funds at risk.
Now, the company is finally allowing its users to move their crypto balances from PayPal into external wallets and exchanges. The feature will begin rolling out to US customers this week and will be available for all PayPal Personal accounts with a USD balance. The company says it’s one of the most requested features since launching crypto on the platform in March of this year. In order to transfer their currency, customers will need to log into the crypto section of the PayPal app and select the coin they wish to transfer. They will then be provided with a unique PayPal address for that coin, which they can then paste into an external wallet or exchange. Users are encouraged to double check their addresses, as transferring a crypto to the wrong type of wallet could result in irrecoverable loss. transfer bitcoin to paypal