The initial announcement that Amazon would start accepting Bitcoin payments caused a spike in the coin’s price.
Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) has openly rejected claims by a British newspaper, City A.M., that it would start accepting Bitcoin payments by the end of the year.
The report by City A.M. was distributed freely on the London Underground and had cited an unnamed insider as the source of the information. It claimed that Amazon was discussing a total integration of cryptocurrencies into its payment system, beginning with Bitcoin. The report further claimed that the directive was issued by Jeff Bezos.
However, the E-commerce giant has dissociated itself from such a report. The firm stated that despite its interest in the cryptocurrency space, and rightly so, there were no particular plans about any cryptocurrencies yet. Rather, as the spokesperson for the firm said in the email:
“We remain focused on exploring what this could look like for customers shopping on Amazon.”
The initial announcement that Amazon would start accepting Bitcoin payments caused a spike in the coin’s price. With Bloomberg reporting Amazon’s denial, the price tumbled downwards again. At the time of writing, it was down by 4.08% in 24 hours to $37,065.23.
Per the spokesperson’s comments, while there may be no full-scale rush to adopt a cryptocurrency, Amazon was keeping its eyes and ears out. Just last week, the company had announced its intention to hire a “digital currency and blockchain product lead” to develop Amazon’s cryptocurrency and blockchain strategic product pipeline.
The product manager would be based in Seattle and work with Amazon’s payments acceptance and experience group. Speaking about the job posting, a spokesperson for the company said,
“We believe the future will be built on new technologies that enable modern, fast and inexpensive payments, and hope to bring that future to Amazon customers as soon as possible.”
The successful candidate for the job was required to be one with previous expertise in blockchain, cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies. This expertise would then be deployed to position the company with ready capacities to take advantage of changes in the cryptocurrency space in line with the company’s overall vision.
The job posting is not Amazon’s first foray into the digital currency ecosystem. Back in 2013, the company introduced an Amazon coin that allows users to access discounts when making purchases with their Kindle and Fire tablets. In 2017, Amazon Chief Executive Officer, Andy Jassy, had also noted that while the company was not focusing on blockchain technology, it was observing developments.
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