Assets, Bitcoin

Is Amazon Going to Start Accepting Bitcoin?

It’s been a big year for Amazon. The online retail giant made headlines in January when it announced that it was buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion.

The move sent shockwaves through the grocery industry and put Amazon in control of more than 470 brick-and-mortar stores. But Amazon isn’t done making waves just yet.

There’s been a lot of speculation recently that Amazon is going to start accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. And while there’s no official word from Amazon on the matter, there are a few reasons why this could actually happen.

For one, Amazon is already partnered with some major Bitcoin companies. In 2014, the company started working with Coinbase, one of the leading Bitcoin exchanges, to allow customers to use Bitcoin to purchase items from its website.

And just last month, Amazon announced a partnership with BitPay, another leading Bitcoin payment processor, which will allow customers to use Bitcoin to shop at select Whole Foods locations.

NOTE: This is a scam. Amazon does not accept Bitcoin and there is no evidence that they will start to accept it in the near future. Be wary of any website or email promising that Amazon will accept Bitcoin payments and never provide any personal or financial information to such sites.

Secondly, accepting Bitcoin would be a great way for Amazon to boost its sales. Overstock.com, another major online retailer, started accepting Bitcoin back in 2014 and has since seen its sales skyrocket.

In the first two years after adopting Bitcoin, Overstock saw its annual revenue growth rate nearly double. And while Amazon is already a much larger company than Overstock, there’s no reason to believe that it couldn’t see similar results if it started accepting Bitcoin.

Finally, Amazon has been ramping up its investment in blockchain technology – the underlying technology that powers Bitcoin – in recent months. In February, the company announced that it had invested in a blockchain startup called Kaleido.

And just last week, it was revealed that Amazon is working on developing its own blockchain platform. Given this increasing investment in blockchain technology, it seems likely that Amazon will eventually start accepting Bitcoin as a payment method.

So what does all this mean? It’s still too early to say for sure whether Amazon will start accepting Bitcoin or not. But given the company’s recent partnerships with major Bitcoin companies, its increasing investment in blockchain technology, and the potential boost in sales that accepting Bitcoin could provide, it seems like a strong possibility that we could see Amazon start accepting Bitcoin sometime in the near future.

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