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Andy Yen, Proton AG co-founder and CEO, has not yet confirmed whether his organization will continue to hold Bitcoin (BTC) or not.
The company is known for its encrypted email services ProtonMail. Previously, the team described BTC as a way to pay for “secure email anonymously,” despite the crypto not being hidden, as every transaction that takes place is written down on the blockchain.
According to Forbes, Yen said that “There’s an internal debate: I don’t have the answer to that yet — I’m not sure if we continue to hold Bitcoin or not hold Bitcoin.”
“People are not going to have faith and confidence and trust in an asset class if it is frequently having 80% crash cycles. We need the crash cycles to be less and less severe over time and that’s just not happening,” he added.
As its official website states, “ProtonMail is a private email service that uses open source, independently audited end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption to secure your communications.” This facilitates users against potential data breaches along with total privacy.
ProtonMail was created in 2014 by teams of scientists and engineers who met at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Proton also provides calendar, file storage, VPN (Virtual Private Network), and more.
As per media reports, ProtonMail, stated in November 2017, it had started BTC for payments in exchange of their services. BTC is also accepted as donations, till date utmost 200 BTC — $3.3 millions at rate noted at press time.
In August 2017, Protonmail disclosed that BTC will be added as their official payment option, and other cryptocurrencies will be followed in the queue soon. It unofficially started accepting BTC in 2014. In the same year, PayPal froze over $285,000 crowdfunding donations accounts, in an attempt to highlight the firm’s legitimacy.
In 2017, the team noted, that “The general increase in the number of bitcoin transactions over the years has made that [manual] approach unfeasible and made development of an automated system necessary. We feel this is indicative of a broader trend, where the increased mainstream interest in bitcoin will make it harder for merchants not to support bitcoin, which will lead to more bitcoin support, more transactions, and perhaps the continued appreciation of bitcoin prices.”
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast, with a major in macroeconomics and minor in business statistics. She believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks, and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning. She frequently researches, and posts content on the top altcoins, their theoretical working principles and technical price predictions.
