Venmo, the popular peer-to-peer payments app owned by PayPal that counts 70M users, today announced that users can buy, hold and, sell cryptocurrency directly within the Venmo app.

Why should we care?
Venmo’s cryptocurrency rollout is the latest among a series of moves from PayPal to integrate cryptocurrencies within its platform. In October of last year, the company launched capabilities to buy and sell cryptocurrencies within PayPal, and in March, it acquired crypto security firm Curv. The Venmo cryptocurrency feature allows users to invest in bitcoin, ether, litecoin, and bitcoin cash with a minimum spending requirement of $1, and share their crypto purchase and selling activity in their Venmo social feeds. Though Venmo users won’t be able to transfer crypto from other wallets (e.g. Coinbase) to Venmo, buying and selling crypto through Venmo considerably lowers the bar for consumers to enter the crypto space. This is because users can tap their Venmo balance to purchase tokens. PayPal is jumping on the growth of crypto investing that took hold during the pandemic: According to PayPal’s 2020 Venmo Customer Behavior Study, more than 30% of Venmo customers already started purchasing crypto or equities, 20% of which started during the pandemic. “Crypto on Venmo is a new way for the Venmo community to start exploring the world of crypto, within the Venmo environment they trust and rely on as a key component of their everyday financial lives," Darrell Esch, senior vice president and general manager of Venmo at PayPal said in a statement.