Content adapted from this Zerohedge.com article : Source
When will online retailers get into the cryptocurrency game?
Of course, the biggest fish in that pond is Amazon, a company subject to many rumors.
One online organization that is starting to move in that direction is PayPal. On March 1, it filed for a patent to speed up cryptocurrency transactions.
Expedited virtual currency transactions are provided by identifying a first user primary wallet associated with a virtual currency and including a first user primary wallet private key. First user secondary wallets are created that each include a respective first user secondary wallet private key, and a respective virtual currency transaction is performed using the first user primary wallet private key to transfer predefined amounts of the virtual currency from the first user primary wallet to each of the first user secondary wallets such that first user secondary wallets are provided with different predefined amounts of the virtual currency. Subsequently, an instruction is received to transfer a payment amount to a second user, and the second user is allocated a subset of the first user secondary wallet private keys included in respective first user secondary wallets that are associated with predefined amounts of the virtual currency that equal the payment amount.
We shouldn't however expect a Paypal Lightning Network or anything close to that any time soon. There is currently a global race to file patents for everything crypto or "blockchain" related and the company might just be strengthening its portfolio for future patent battles.
The patent filing deals with one of the main points of contention with cryptocurrency as a method of purchase. There is a long delay from the time the transaction is intitiated until confirmation. PayPal seeks to speed up this process to enable cryptocurrency to be used like other methods of payment.
"In many transaction situations, a 10 minute wait time will be too long for payers and/or payees, and those payers and/or payees will instead choose to perform the transaction using traditional payment methods rather than virtual currency. Issues like this have slowed the adoption of virtual currencies despite their advantages. Thus, there is a need for an expedited virtual currency transaction system," explains Paypal
When news of the patent filing broke, Wall Street pushed PayPal higher.
Acceptance of cryptocurreny as a form of payment by a major online merchant or two would go a long way to giving it the boost many are looking for. PayPal might be one of the players to bring this to reality.
Non-adapted content found at zerohedge.com: Source