PayPal is reportedly acquiring the Curv cryptocurrency custody firm, with price estimates varying between $200 to $500 million. The Curv purchase is the latest in a range of moves showing PayPal’s interest in cryptocurrencies. The payment processing giant allowed crypto purchases in Q4 2020, increasing the trading limits from $10,000 to $15,000 in November owing to unexpected demand. Moreover, recently PayPal declared that it would expand crypto purchase and sale to Venmo and United Kingdom users in 2021.
Furthermore, PayPal’s crypto offering has been slightly limited, with users possessing no authority over their private keys. It will be fascinating to witness what use case the company has for Curv, a custody firm that manages digital assets’ storage. Curv raised $23 million last year to continue assisting institutional demand for Bitcoin, with Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group amongst the investors. Leading DeFi protocol Compound also combined Curv the previous year, making PayPal’s current acquisition is a severe crypto custody player.
Surge in CRV token after the news of Curv’s acquisition
The crypto community got excited after the announcement of the acquisition. Curv’s CRV token has surged by more than 10% in an hour of the news breaking as opportunistic traders chased each other to penetrate the markets. This pushed the prices up from approximately $2.30 to $2.60. Traders also mistakenly tagged Curv’s official Twitter account in various posts commemorating PayPal’s acquisition, to which Curv has acknowledged in an attempt to dismiss the confusion.
CRV immediately inverted the rally to deliver back all of its gains as traders recognized their mistake. The resulting red candlestick was CRV’s most comprehensive hourly candlestick by trade volume since Jan.21. Despite the chaos, CRV has since bounced off support at $2.20. It last traded hands for $2.60 to post an increase of 29% over the past 24 hours. Moreover, CRV currently ranks as today’s best-performing Ethereum-based asset, according to market data aggregator Messari.
However, this is not the first time enthusiastic traders have rushed in to purchase the wrong ticker. In January, chaotic traders rallied around the New York Stock Exchange-listed TRX. This happened after promoting Justin Sun’s Tron cryptocurrency (also TRX) to traders in the notorious r/WallStreetBets group. The day witnessed TRX stock prices surge from $0.85 to more than $1.90 before falling to close the day at an approximately 15% loss.
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