From hints to denials, will Amazon follow giants like PayPal and Tesla into the digital currency market?

Last weekend, a job posting by online retail giant Amazon attracted attention because the position was the head of digital currency and blockchain products. After the news came out, Bitcoin quickly soared to $40,000 and Amazon's stock price rose by about 1%.

According to insiders, the digital currency and blockchain product manager recruited by Amazon this time will belong to the Payments Acceptance & Experience team and will need to "use expertise in blockchain, distributed ledgers, central bank digital currencies, and cryptocurrencies to develop functional cases, while also working closely with Amazon teams including AWS to develop roadmaps, including customer experience, technical strategy and capabilities, and release strategy." (Note: AWS, or Amazon Web Services, is Amazon's cloud computing division, which mainly provides infrastructure support for other companies to build software and technology products.)

Not only that, Amazon has extremely high requirements for this position. Applicants need to:

1. Understand the vision and strategy of Amazon’s digital currency and blockchain strategy and product roadmap

2. Prepare work documents according to the needs of customers and partners

3. In-depth analysis of customer and system data

4. Collaborate effectively with other leaders in product, design, marketing, engineering, science, and business intelligence

5. Maintain excellent judgment on the priorities between key functions, architectural improvements and operational excellence

6. Monitor project execution and ensure projects are delivered on target dates with an appropriate level of quality

Undoubtedly, this recruitment has caused a lot of speculation in the industry, especially after technology giants such as Tesla and SpaceX began to enter the digital currency market, many people felt that Amazon also showed its ambition in this emerging field. British financial publication City AM quoted Amazon's "insider" as saying that Amazon plans to accept Bitcoin payments by the end of the year and launch its own cryptocurrency in 2022.

But soon, an Amazon spokesperson denied the report and responded in an email:

“While we are interested in the space, speculation surrounding Amazon’s specific plans for cryptocurrency is untrue, and we remain focused on exploring what services and experiences we can provide to customers on the Amazon platform.”

The spokesperson added in the statement:

“We are inspired by the innovations in the cryptocurrency space and are currently exploring what it would look like to use cryptocurrency on the Amazon platform. We believe that new technologies will enable fast, affordable, and modern payment services in the future, and we want to make this service available to Amazon customers as soon as possible.”

However, it is undeniable that Amazon is indeed "very interested" in cryptocurrencies, as they are very popular among young and tech-savvy shoppers. At an event a few years ago, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company is paying close attention to the development of blockchain technology, but at the same time is skeptical about the technology. At a press conference at Amazon's AWS event in 2017, Andy Jassy said:

“We haven’t seen a broader real-world use case for blockchain than using distributed ledgers. Amazon doesn’t deploy technology just because it’s cool. We only choose it when it solves a customer problem and building a service is the best way to solve that problem.”

At this stage, Amazon does not allow customers to use any cryptocurrency for payment, but its cloud service infrastructure AWS is a blockchain technology infrastructure product.

On the other hand, other technology companies have also recently tried to enter the cryptocurrency industry.

First, PayPal. At the end of last year, the PayPal application added support for cryptocurrency transactions such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The company revealed that users who use the cryptocurrency transaction function now log in twice as often as before. In April this year, PayPal's mobile payment software Venmo also began to support cryptocurrency transactions, allowing specific customers to buy, sell and hold digital currencies.

Another company worth watching is Tesla, led by billionaire Elon Musk, but the electric car giant seems to be a bit hesitant when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Earlier this year, Tesla announced that it would accept Bitcoin payments for car purchases, but in May, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as a payment option due to environmental concerns, resulting in a plunge in Bitcoin prices. In early July, Musk said that Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin in the future, and he also revealed at the "The B Word" conference that another company under his control, SpaceX, also holds Bitcoin.

According to Tesla's latest financial report, the company did not purchase or sell any new digital assets in the second quarter of 2021, and currently holds Bitcoin worth $1.3 billion. In February this year, Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and reduced its position by 10% at the end of the first quarter, making a profit of $272 million. However, due to the sluggish digital currency market in the second quarter, the value of Tesla's Bitcoin shrank by $23 million.

Back to Amazon, while reports of the company’s involvement in digital currencies may be exaggerated, one thing is certain – Amazon has already started testing the waters.