PayPal, Venmo Expand Crypto Offering with LINK, SOL Tokens Owing to User Feedback

US-based payment platforms PayPal and Venmo have expanded their crypto offering with two new tokens -- Chainlink (LINK) and Solana (SOL). PayPal Holdings, Inc., which parents both the platforms, announced the development through an official blog post over the weekend. The company claimed that it analysed the feedback from its user community to list these two tokens for buying, selling, and trading. In the coming weeks, Venmo and PayPal users will be able to engage with LINK and SOL.

The PayPal leadership wants to offer better access to digital currencies to its estimated 434 million userbase. This comes at a time when the US is looking to create a conducive legal ecosystem for the crypto sector. Even though the regulatory environment around crypto was unclear in the US in 2020, PayPal had listed crypto tokens on its platform. Presently, Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and PayPal USD are the other tokens available on the platform.

"We've been listening to our users about what they want to do with crypto on our platforms. One piece of feedback we've heard is to make additional tokens available," May Zabaneh, Vice President of Product, Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies at PayPal said in a statement.

At present, Chainlink is the 13th largest crypto by market cap, according to CoinMarketCap. Currently, the LINK token is trading at $10.70 (roughly Rs. 920), with over 657 million tokens in circulation. The total valuation of the LINK token presently stands at $7.11 billion (roughly Rs. 60,993 crore).

Solana, meanwhile, holds the seventh rank on CoinMarketCap's index of largest crypto tokens. With over 515 million SOL tokens in circulation, its present market cap stands at $52.2 billion (roughly Rs. 44,8671 crore). At the time of writing, SOL is trading at $101.47 (roughly Rs. 8,580) on global exchanges.

"The addition of LINK and SOL reflects the company's dedication to the evolving digital currency landscape and fostering greater accessibility and engagement in the cryptocurrency market," PayPal's announcement added.

PayPal's History with Crypto

After PayPal forayed into crypto listings in 2020, it took several other steps to gradually experiment with Web3 services. In 2021, it started allowing its UK customers to engage with the listed crypto assets on its platform.

In 2022, when PayPal started working on its USD-backed stablecoin, it appointed a six-member advisory council to conduct research and analysis on blockchain-related usecases that can improve its infrastructure. Later in 2023, the company finally launched the PYUSD stablecoin.

Last year, PayPal started allowing its US-based business account holders to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies directly through their PayPal accounts.

In 2023, the platform claimed to have held $499 million (roughly Rs. 4,095 crore) worth of customer assets in the form of Bitcoin and $362 million (roughly Rs. 2,971 crore) as Ether tokens. Cumulatively, PayPal said it held nearly $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,210 crore) worth of crypto in user assets at the time.

In February, via an official blog post, PayPal called itself the first and only payments company to reimburse users up to $50,000 (roughly Rs. 42.9 lakh) at no additional cost for unauthorised crypto transfers.