Amazon Denies It’s Accepting Bitcoin, But Original Source Stands By Reporting

Bitcoin: An Integral Part of the Future Mechanism of How Amazon Will Work

Speaking to City A.M., the unidentified inside source said that Amazon had been working on introducing bitcoin (and other cryptocurrency) payments since 2019.

“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,” said the source. “Ethereum, Cardano and Bitcoin Cash will be next in line before they bring about eight of the most popular cryptocurrencies online.”

Source: Twitter

Needless to say, this apparent revelation got the market a little hot under the collar. The price of bitcoin rose from roughly $34,600 at midnight on Monday July 26 (four hours and 39 minutes before the City A.M. article was published), to $40,367 by the end of the day.

Source: CoinGecko

At the same time, the cap of the entire cryptocurrency market also enjoyed a very noticeable bounce. It rose from about $1.4 trillion to a one-month high of $1.58 trillion, while the likes of ethereum and polkadot jumped by 11.8% and 12.7% in less than 24 hours.

However, what goes up must come down, and Amazon itself poo-pooed the reports with an official response, sent out to Reuters and other outlets by the end of Monday.

“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,” said a spokesperson for the book retailer.

This explicit denial added weight to speculation from certain commentators that the news was part of some elaborate pump.

Source: Twitter

Looking at the cryptocurrency market’s recent history (i.e. over the past few months), it does indeed appear that certain people, with the aim of boosting prices, have started rumours that some Big Tech firm is about to move into crypto. For example, at the beginning of July, @AltcoinGordon began a rumour that Apple was about to announce a massive $2.5 billion purchase of bitcoin. This was actually picked up by a number of less stringent news outlets.

Source: Twitter

Likewise, rumours were spread in April of Facebook announcing its ownership of BTC, although again, this turned out to be just that, rumours.

Basically, the point is that there appears to be quite a bit of speculation going around at the moment concerning Big Tech companies and cryptocurrency. A cynic (or a realist, depending on your viewpoint) would argue that this has become part of an attempt to resuscitate the flagging cryptocurrency market, which has been taking two steps back and one step forward for a couple of months now.

City AM Stands By Its Reporting

However, as we noted above, City A.M. has told CryptoVantage it stands by its reporting. Given that it isn’t a crypto-focused outlet, we can at least assume that it doesn’t have a financial interest in high cryptocurrency prices, and that it wouldn’t have published its report unless it had reliable assurances that its source truly was an Amazon employee.

In other words, it’s possible that its article is largely or wholly true. Of course, with Amazon categorically denying it, it’s obviously impossible to know for sure. But then again, Amazon’s denial may not be reliable, insofar as companies may once in a while deny something until officially announcing it (for competitive reasons).

But strangely enough, one thing seems clear: bitcoin’s rally on July 26 seems not to have been caused by the City AM news.

In fact, if you look at CoinGecko’s bitcoin chart, you’ll see that BTC’s price rose to $38,295 by 3:00am on July 26. This is about an hour and a half before the City AM piece was published.

Source: CoinGecko

This is odd, yet it supports claims that the rally was caused primarily by a short squeeze. Such squeezes occur when a rise in price forces short sellers to close their shorts, something which necessitates them buying BTC (or whatever else they’re shorting).

Source: Twitter

So what caused the initial rise in price that triggered the squeeze? No one really knows, although some have speculated that it was Tether (USDT) holders buying up BTC before the media reported on Tether’s executives facing an investigation into potential bank fraud.

Source: Twitter

Such claims are, however, pure speculation, despite Tether’s checkered and controversial history. Still, the fact that Tether is facing a new investigation hints at why Amazon, or any other Big Tech giant, may not be rushing to accept bitcoin right now. As with traders, it may be better for them to bide their time, wait for the market to mature and stabilize, and then go all in.