Bitcoin has retreated around 15% in the last seven days. Despite its price rally this year (rising over 60%) and the fervor around trading the crypto, its acceptance as a form of payment for transactions has yet to be totally proven.
Josh Silverman, Etsy Inc Chief Executive Officer, said the e-commerce retailer is not considering accepting the crypto as a mode of payment at the moment, adding that more people must own it first before it can be used as legit tender.
Still has a lot to prove
“I don’t think it’s quite ready yet to be tender,” Yahoo Finance Live quoted Silverman as saying in an interview. “You need a lot of people holding it before it’s actually useful as a form of tender… I don’t think 2021 is a year when we would prioritize that,” he pointed out.
In an interview with CNBC, Silverman said he had been a holder of bitcoin for the last six or seven years as he sees the crypto as an interesting store of value.
Silverman’s observations come during a week that has served as a serious reminder of the unpredictability of Bitcoin and digital assets in general.
Markets felt the pinch this week. On February 22, a Bitcoin correction of 15% in just 24 hours occurred when the price plunged from an all-time peak of $58,000 to just under $49,000. The retreat wiped out $100 million from Bitcoin’s $1 trillion market value.
Not in his balance sheet
Silverman is also not keen on adding bitcoin to the company’s balance sheet, a move that companies like Tesla, Square, and MicroStrategy have made. “The cash that Etsy has on its balance sheet stays in very safe securities,” Silverman said.
The New York-based online marketplace’s stock is worth around $27 billion. Etsy’s shares were trading 8% higher during the early morning session Friday after it posted better-than-estimated sales for the fourth quarter and provided a strong outlook for the first quarter.
Clearly, Etsy is playing it safe for now, according to Decrypt. A recent poll by consultant Gartner showed that only 5% of financial executives would actually consider holding Bitcoin due to its volatility.
Image courtesy of Wall Street Journal/YouTube
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