Why the PayPal Rally Isn't What It Seems, and Why That's OK

The service will be rolled out to Venmo, a PayPal company, and to other geographical areas in the first half of next year.

The other cryptocurrencies supported by PayPal also saw weekly returns of 10-15%.A cheerful rally is generally good news, and this one seems to have energized a market that had been slipping into sentiment doldrums.

The PayPal news is positive for the industry as a whole.

PayPal does bring over 340 million users to the crypto table.

What's more, users will not be able to transfer their crypto holdings out of their PayPal account, nor will they be able to send crypto to other PayPal users.

Why would people spend an investment asset, forgoing any potential gain? True, in some countries it might be easier to pay via PayPal using bitcoin than dollars.

Perhaps even more significant than these and other market indicators that point to a quiet accumulation of interest is the message that the PayPal news sends.

PayPal is far from the only corporation to realize that it was wrong.

PayPal has authorization to transact in cryptocurrency on behalf of its clients in 49 states, but there are no doubt many more regulatory hoops to jump through before the service can comply with KYC/AML rules on a global basis.

PayPal could be signaling that, first, users need to get used to the idea.