Digital currencies are all the rage at the moment, largely down to the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies. This time around, we are seeing large investors and corporations looking to enter the space as well, which is helping keep the market for these currencies buoyant, and in fact, driving their prices further upwards. For example, an announcement by Tesla that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, and that it would soon begin accepting cryptocurrencies as payment for its vehicles, was enough to send Bitcoin’s price soaring by more than 15% in the space of a few hours, to beyond $40,000. Other giants such as PayPal and Square have also announced their moves into the crypto space in the past, and now these have been followed by arguably the biggest company in the world, Amazon.
Amazon is looking to enter the digital currency space in an aggressive manner, according to reports, and Mexico seems to be the first market for this. There has been no official announcement regarding this, but Amazon has put out a number of job listings, looking for people to lead and work on projects where people will be able to convert their cash into a digital currency, which can then be used on Amazon for various products and services, with Mexico being the launch country for this initiative. The currency to be used for this has also not been specified, but it is highly unlikely that Amazon will go with a public currency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. It is far more likely that they will look to create its own currency, based on its AWS technology and servers.
This project, as stated earlier, is aiming at Mexico for launch, but other job postings hint at Amazon broadly targeting emerging markets first for this currency. That makes sense, since these countries are still largely behind the curve when it comes to digital currency adoption, and there are some huge untapped markets, such as India, where Amazon could quickly pick up many millions of customers. This would be an interesting overall approach, and yet another example of businesses looking at the digital space to try and gain an edge over their competitors. With regard to cryptocurrencies, there have already been various examples of this, with the online gambling sector leading the way in adopting cryptocurrencies to improve its customer experience. Many operators are using blockchain, for example, to support their games, which makes them faster, more reliable and less prone to manipulation. At the same time, they are also giving players the option to make bets through cryptocurrencies. Therefore, an operator with a site https://winz.io/ would be able to attract crypto users as well as gambling fans, and this has proven to be the case, as such sites have seen a lot of revenue growth since these features were introduced. Online and digital currencies seem to be the future, and therefore we should expect to see more and more companies looking to adopt these technologies in the coming months and years.
Amazon already has one form of digital currency of sorts, with its coins, where users can spend these coins on Amazon for apps, games and other digital purchases. The conversion rate for these is $1 = 100 coins, and users can buy anywhere from 300 to 50,000 coins, or even higher if they want. This is not a very well-publicised feature for Amazon, though, and one reason could be that the company does not want to take attention and potential business away from its digital currency when it does get launched. In any case, Amazon looks set to move ahead with its entry into the digital currency space, and thus we can expect to be talking about this for quite some time, especially once it hits the market.
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