Google is inching into the world of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as the company’s payments division struggles to gain significant market share in the payments space and touts adding custody capabilities to its cards. digital , as reported by Bloomberg .
” Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to ,” Bill Ready, Google’s president of commerce, has said, according to the report. “As user and merchant demand evolves, we will evolve with it.”
According to Bloomberg , Google has partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase and crypto payment processor BitPay to enable the new functionality. The executive has said that his team is looking at other partnership opportunities, although the company does not yet accept bitcoin for transactions.
Google ‘s cryptocurrency integrations allow its customers to hold BTC on their digital cards while spending fiat currency , an arrangement that doesn’t exactly use peer-to-peer assets (networks of nodes that behave as equals to each other) as a medium of exchange. , rather it allows users to spend their bitcoin holdings.
Given the astronomical rise in bitcoin’s purchasing power over the past decade, it’s hard to conceive of a scenario where bitcoiners would want to part with some of their BTC, as the opportunity cost of holding it and spending fiat directly instead increases.
The news comes after the company in October turned its back on an earlier push in the banking sector , hiring former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to run its payments division. According to Ready, Google wants to become a “connective tissue” for the entire consumer finance sector.
“We are not a bank, we have no intention of being one,” Ready told Bloomberg . “Some previous efforts, at times, unintentionally stepped into those spaces.”
Google parent’s stealthy quantum tech group plans to spin off to become an independent company
This Google innovation in the cryptocurrency market comes a few weeks after it became known that the secretive quantum technology group of Alphabet (parent of Google) is preparing to spin off from the company , Business Insider has learned .
Sandbox, often known as Sandbox@Alphabet, was originally created by Google co-founder Sergey Brin and has been run by entrepreneur Jack Hidary for more than four years.
Separate from Google’s quantum computing team in Santa Barbara, California, Sandbox focuses on software and more experimental quantum projects . It is part of the Google incubator, known as X, although it is considered an independent unit.
Hidary now plans to turn Sandbox into an independent company, according to two people familiar with the matter who have asked not to be identified to discuss their private plans.
Taking Sandbox out of Alphabet could give Hidary more freedom to move faster and raise capital outside of Google’s walls, according to the sources . “Jack Hidary does what he wants,” one of them said. “His spirit is not to waste time.”