Amazon gears up for Bitcoin payments... and its own crypto

Earlier this year, we reported on a secretive Amazon “Software Development Manager” job listing within its ominously titled “Digital Emerging Payments” projects division. The Mexico-based posting, which has since been taken down, focused on developing systems to “enable customers to convert their cash into digital currency using which customers can enjoy online services including shopping for goods and/or services like Prime Video.” While this almost definitely would center on established cryptocurrency tokens like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cardano, it stood to reason that what this really foretold was some kind of native Amazon token... an idea that should send shudders down your spine.

Less than six months’ later, our dread appears even more founded than before following both a new “cryptocurrency and blockchain lead” job opening, and a potential leak from an anonymous Amazon insider. Speaking with City AM, the source appears to confirm that Bezos’ empire intends to begin accepting Bitcoin payments “by the end of the year” with hopes to unveil its own in-house blockchain-based token sometime in 2022. “This is a full-on, well-discussed, integral part of the future mechanism of how Amazon will work,” the source explains.

The anonymous leaker describes the future Amazon economy as “a multi-level infrastructure where you can pay for goods and services or earn tokens in a loyalty scheme,” which sounds as on-brand and unsurprising as it does terrifying and awful. Mark our words: PrimeCoin is coming, and Bezos is somehow gonna use it to fuel his future space vacations and fund cosmic “sacrifice zones.”

A false sense of securities (fraud) — Before we experience the world’s largest retailer overseen by the world’s wealthiest man rolling out its own, native digital currency, we’ll at least have the option of purchasing the new season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Prime Video using Bitcoin. As City AM’s source notes, Amazon is wisely choosing to first integrate crypto transactions by way of a number of tokens that will most likely also include Ethereum, Cardano, and Bitcoin Cash, eventually encompassing around “eight of the most popular cryptocurrencies online.” “When all these crypto ducks are lined up, there’s another twist to push things even further into Amazon’s favour — a native token,” they explain.

Only then we will get to see what a world looks like when corporations introduce glorified blockchain scrip to their customers and incentivize its usage over fiat currency via bonus content and deleted scenes from the aforementioned season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. What a time to be alive.