Bitcoin has been on fire since Friday (July 23) evening partly due to interesting news about online shopping giant Amazon’s interest in crypto and partly due to the short squeeze that followed.
It all started last Friday when the jobs section of the Amazon website said that the company was looking to fill the position of “Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Lead”.
It appears from this job posting that Amazon’s Payments Acceptance & Experience team is trying to find “an experienced product leader to develop Amazon’s Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap.” The ideal candidate will use their “domain expertise in Blockchain, Distributed Ledger, Central Bank Digital Currencies and Cryptocurrency” to “develop the case for the capabilities which should be developed, drive overall vision and product strategy, and gain leadership buy-in and investment for new capabilities.”
According to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement:
“We’re inspired by the innovation happening in the cryptocurrency space and are exploring what this could look like on Amazon. 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.”
Then, earlier today, CityAM published a report that “an insider” had told them that Amazon is aiming to release its own token next year.
According to the report, this unnamed person told them:
“This isn’t just going through the motions to set up cryptocurrency payment solutions at some point in the future – this is a full-on, well-discussed, integral part of the future mechanism of how Amazon will work… It begins with Bitcoin – this is the key first stage of this crypto project, and the directive is coming from the very top… Jeff Bezos himself…
“Ethereum, Cardano and Bitcoin Cash will be next in line before they bring about eight of the most popular cryptocurrencies online… It won’t take long because the plans are already there, and they have been working on them since 2019… This entire project is pretty much ready to roll… When all these crypto ducks are lined up, there’s another twist to push things even further into Amazon’s favour – a native token…
“After a year of experiencing cryptocurrency as a way of making payments for goods, it is looking increasingly possible that we’re heading towards tokenisation. This then becomes a multi-level infrastructure where you can pay for goods and services or earn tokens in a loyalty scheme. There’s little more to it, for now, but you can guarantee the Bitcoin plan will be monitored closely as opportunities with Amazon’s own version of a crypto will be explored.”
As for what this bullish news did to the bears who were shorting Bitcoin, Russian crypto analyst Lex Moskovski 100,000 accounts that had liquidated short BTC positions totalling around $846 million.
And another crypto analyst — Alex Krüger — says that this past weekend we witnessed what he called a “picture perfect short squeeze”.
Since news of Amazon’s interest in crypto first came out on Friday, the Bitcoin price has surged 20%. According to data by TradingView, the Bitcoin price is currently (as of 11:40 UTC on July 26) trading around $38,509, up nearly 12% in the past 24-hour period.
Update at 05:35 UTC on 27 July 2021:
According to a report by CoinDesk, Amazon said yesterday that although it is interested in the crypto space, the specific plans mentioned in the CityAM report are not accurate. A spokesperson for the company told CoinDesk via email:
“Notwithstanding our interest in the space, the speculation that has ensued around our specific plans for cryptocurrencies is not true… We remain focused on exploring what this could look like for customers shopping on Amazon.”
DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
