Amazon’s denial of Bitcoin-related plans sounds like confirmation

Reuters has published a denial from an unidentified “Amazon spokesperson” regarding rumours published a few days ago by London-based newspaper City AM that reported the company’s acceptance of payments in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

The rumours had been published last Sunday and had been gathered by an unidentified company insider who had described a plan to enable cryptocurrency payments on the well-known e-commerce platform as early as 2021. 

The denial published yesterday defines this information as “speculation” and calls it “not true”. 

However, the spokesperson who denied such speculations also explicitly stated that the company has interest in the crypto sector, saying that Amazon does indeed have “specific plans for cryptocurrencies”. 

The spokesperson also added: 

“We remain focused on exploring what this could look like for customers shopping on Amazon”.

The thing is that, in addition to the rumours published by City AM, there is nonetheless a rather explicit job offer for the search for a “product leader”, published on Amazon’s official website, which leaves little room for interpretation, or denial. 

“The Payments Acceptance & Experience team is seeking an experienced product leader to develop Amazon’s Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap”.

Therefore, with this denial published by Reuters, the Amazon spokesperson only confirms that the company has plans regarding Bitcoin, and that they are, as usual, analysing customer desires to understand how best to satisfy them. So, should a significant portion of their customer base wish to pay with cryptocurrencies, it is unlikely that they would ignore it. 

What they are actually disproving is the insider’s suggestion that cryptocurrency payments could be enabled by the end of the year. 

Furthermore, the same job ad for a Digital Currency and Blockchain product leader explicitly states: 

“In this role, you will: Own the vision and strategy for Amazon’s Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap”.

The same spokesperson who allegedly debunked the rumours said that the company has “specific plans”, which at this point could also involve issuing its own token. 

What he denied, therefore, is not the fact that they are interested in developing their own token, but only that they are already doing so, or that, indeed, everything is almost ready to be brought to market, as suggested more or less explicitly by the insider. 

If we add to that the fact that Amazon has been active in the blockchain field since at least 2019, the spokesperson’s denial actually has all the appearance of a confirmation that the company is working on something, perhaps already concrete, and that the assumptions of what that might really be are simply false.