Regarding the news in alt coin adoption trends, CryptoCurrencyWire Communications Director Jonathan Keim addressed subjects ranging from traditional financial service institutions’ move toward offering services on a decentralized finance (“DeFi”) framework to rumors PayPal may launch its own alt coin in the next year.

“I was just amazed at all the progress that’s being made. … There’s no doubt that this is the year that will be a key landmark in the history of digital finance,” Keim said.

Keim noted that 86 percent of financial institutions that took part in a Europe-wide survey are implementing or assessing services that use DeFi.

“But the really amazing thing is that 31 percent of those companies are reporting an enterprise-wide rollout or have at least deployed an actual use case of DeFi already,” Keim said. “And quite honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen banks move forward so quickly on anything. I remember hearing DeFi in just the last 12 months and here a third of these companies are already on the train.”

Keim also noted that Singapore’s largest bank plans to launch its own crypto exchange, establishing a relatively easy to access crypto on-ramp for people who bank in that country. Taylor compared it to JPMorgan Chase’s announcement it is going to develop its own coin.

“It’ll be interesting to see how all this evolves and where all these big financial institutions fit into this,” Taylor said.

Regarding PayPal’s plans to potentially launch its own crypto in the next six to 12 months, Keim said the CSO for digital asset manager CoinShares is pointing out PayPal’s immense base of more than 300 million active users and the fact that PayPal has left the Libra Association, which it joined last year to help govern Facebook’s Libra digital currency project.

PayPal announced in October that it has partnered with cryptocurrency company Paxos and that it plans to let its U.S. users buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies and eventually to use their crypto assets to fund PayPal purchases, but it has not stated it intends to launch its own coin (https://ccw.fm/KLquz).

“I can’t help but think that (CoinShare’s CSO) knows more than we do and he just wants to be one of the first to call it,” Keim said.

“(PayPal has) already got a fairly seamless way to put it in and take it out of your bank account,” Bates said. “I remember the very first show we talked about how difficult it was to get money from a bank into a crypto account. It came the other way real quick; it’ll only take a day or two to get out of your crypto account and get into the bank but it took a week to 10 days to get from the bank to there. PayPal’s already got that relationship, already has the portal of getting in and out.”

The Wild West Crypto Show podcast appears online and in multiple markets across the country. Bates’ and Taylor’s purpose is to educate people about alt-currencies “so that they’re not afraid of it.” To view the latest episode, which includes CryptoCurrencyWire’s ongoing segment featuring recent news from around the world, visit https://ccw.fm/h6pks.