Software & analytics company Palantir has announced that they will be accepting Bitcoin as a payment method. Palantir will also consider purchasing Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to store on their balance sheet.
Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir (and, notably, PayPal), has been a long-standing cryptocurrency advocate. The company announced that it now accepts BTC for payments and even considers adding it to its balance sheet.
As early as three years ago, Thiel has been seen investing in cryptocurrency mining startups, exchanges, and more, making a bid on the come-up of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.
Earlier today, Block.one (another Thiel-backed software company) announced a bold new venture: a new cryptocurrency exchange named ‘Bullish,’ backed by a whopping $10B in funding. Thiel Capital was one of the leaders in this funding round.
The air is changing: big companies are slowly warming up to cryptocurrency. What started with a wave of small underdogs, like the Ethereum Hotel in China, has blown up this year with flood of large new players accepting Bitcoin – even tech giants like Tesla.
As more companies join the trend and more investors start storing portions of their wealth in cryptocurrencies, there is a very real financial opportunity cost on the horizon for archaic companies that choose not to adopt what’s coming, as they risk alienating a large section of demand.
Whereas some firms are resistant to change due to the additional hiring and costs associated with adding cryptocurrency terminals, many are of the opinion that there will soon come a point where it becomes far more expensive not to accept Bitcoin as a payment method.