Mizuho Securities analyst Don Dolev has forecast that Paypal will earn up to $2 billion in revenue from its bitcoin business by 2023. This year, he expects that the payment giant’s overall revenue will climb 20%.
Dolev says there has been a “dramatic increase in engagement due to crypto,” with 50% of Paypal crypto users opening the app daily. “Both our survey and management commentary unveil a dramatic increase in engagement due to crypto,” said Dolev in a note to clients this week.
Paypal announced in October that its 346 million active users will now be able to buy, hold and sell bitcoin and other digital assets using their Paypal accounts. The company’s crypto service, which runs on Paxos’ fiat-to-crypto exchange, Itbit, has seen an explosion of interest ever since.
At one time, Paypal was buying 70% of all newly minted bitcoin. Dolev’s survey found that bitcoin (BTC) traders use the Paypal app three times as much as non-bitcoiners and that they had significantly higher cash balances on their Paypal digital wallets.
Dolev raised his target price for the Paypal stock to $350 from $290. The stock closed 0.94% down at $239.79 on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Friday. Over the past 52 weeks, the shares have reached a high of $249.85 and a low of $82.07.
In a related development, Lisa Ellis, analyst at Moffett Nathanson, predicted that Paypal’s crypto business will contribute up to $600 million to group revenue in 2021. “Over the long-term, we believe Paypal’s cryptocurrency initiatives have significant strategic value,” she was quoted as saying by Market Watch.
Ellis added that this will help “diversify the Paypal and Venmo apps into ‘destination apps’ for a broad range of financial services, and positioning Paypal to help shape the long-term role of cryptocurrencies in the consumer payment system.”
