Cryptocurrency Price Check: PayPal Expands Crypto Services, Coinbase Buys Crypto

Cryptocurrency prices were climbing Monday, bolstered by recent investments from PayPal Holdings (PYPL) – Get Report and Coinbase Global (COIN) .

Bitcoin was trading above $50,000 for the first time since mid-May after slumping several months ago and losing more than half its value.

Bitcoin was up 2.53% to $50,262, according to CoinDesk, while Ethereum was up 3.1% to $3,338 and Dogecoin rose 1.9% to 32 cents.

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PayPal Holdings (PYPL) – Get Report has expanded its cryptocurrency services outside of the U.S., allowing customers in the U.K. to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies beginning Monday.

In March, PayPal began offering cryptocurrency buying and selling in the U.S., allowing customers to use digital currencies to shop at merchants on its network.

Coinbase Global Chief Executive Bruce Armstrong said the country’s largest crypto-assets exchange was putting its own money into cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, Winston Ma, former managing director and head of North America at China Investment Corp., China’s sovereign wealth fund, noted that China’s recent crackdown on internet companies probably has led to some significant amount of capital, which were allocated to overseas-listed Chinese stocks, moving into crypto trading.

“Various Chinese regulators have come out with new rules for the internet sector over the past few months from anti-trust to data regulation,” said Ma, author of “The Digital War – How China’s Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace.”

Ma added that investors are also waiting to see what impact the policy crackdown has on revenue guidance for companies like Meituan and Kuaishou.

“The crypto market could be interesting to those investors while they try to figure out the long term outlook of Chinese stocks post- new regulations,” he said.

Separately, David Lesperance, managing partner of immigration and tax adviser with Lesperance & Associates, said that the United Kingdom has started the process to implement the “travel rule” to cryptocurrencies.

“In short, sender and receiver information on any crypto-transactions must be recorded and reported BEFORE the transfer can be completed,” he said.

Lesperance said the mandatory threshold is 1K GBP, “but for those who think they will be cute and ‘smurf’ sums just under the threshold, these transferred could be blocked as ‘suspicious transactions’.”