Market News

Amazon is looking to accept Bitcoin payments ‘by the end of the year’, and is investigating its own token for 2022, says an insider.

The internet behemoth set tongues wagging over the weekend after publishing a job advertisement for a cryptocurrency and blockchain lead.

The vacancy, clearly a signal the company is laying down a pathway towards cryptocurrency transactions, calls for someone who can “leverage domain expertise in blockchain, distributed ledger, central bank digital currencies and cryptocurrency”.

It adds that it wants to “develop the case for the capabilities which should be developed, drive overall vision and product strategy, and gain leadership buy-in and investment for new capabilities.”

It doesn’t take a genius on the outside to deduce where Amazon might be going with recruitment but, according to an insider, the plans run much deeper than simply bringing someone on board to examine possibilities.

“This isn’t just going through the motions to set up cryptocurrency payment solutions at some point in the future – this is a full-on, well-discussed, integral part of the future mechanism of how Amazon will work,” she told City AM.

“It begins with Bitcoin – this is the key first stage of this crypto project, and the directive is coming from the very top… Jeff Bezos himself.”

The insider also explained that directors of the world’s fourth largest company were keen to move towards ticking off other big cryptocurrencies once it had established a fast and secure method of Bitcoin payment.

“Ethereum, Cardano and Bitcoin Cash will be next in line before they bring about eight of the most popular cryptocurrencies online,” she added.

“It won’t take long because the plans are already there, and they have been working on them since 2019.

Ready to roll

“This entire project is pretty much ready to roll.”

It is likely that the involvement of a massive player on the scale of Amazon in the cryptocurrency space would advance adoption and price of Bitcoin and the larger alt coins, but it is Bezos’ next plan which could cause even greater intrigue.

“When all these crypto ducks are lined up, there’s another twist to push things even further into Amazon’s favour – a native token,” the insider explained.

“After a year of experiencing cryptocurrency as a way of making payments for goods, it is looking increasingly possible that we’re heading towards tokenisation.

“This then becomes a multi-level infrastructure where you can pay for goods and services or earn tokens in a loyalty scheme.

“There’s little more to it, for now, but you can guarantee the Bitcoin plan will be monitored closely as opportunities with Amazon’s own version of a crypto will be explored.”