For some time now, the crypto community has been holding its breath over how corporate giants like Microsoft and Intel will make use of cryptocurrencies.
To this effect, perhaps no company’s actions have been speculated on as much in the community as Amazon’s. Will the e-commerce powerhouse begin accepting Bitcoin and other cryptos as payment? Are they going to start their own exchange? Do they have other crypto services in mind?
These are just some of the questions that have been floating around with the various Amazon-related rumors the past few weeks.
That’s why eyes were more than just raised on Wednesday, when it became public knowledge that Amazon had purchased three domain names explicitly mentioning cryptocurrencies.
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What we know for now
On Oct. 31st, 2017, three crypto-related domain names were registered by Amazon’s hostmaster (hostmaster@amazon.com) and the Amazon Legal Department on behalf of Amazon Technologies, Inc.
The domains are:
- amazonethereum.com
- amazoncryptocurrency.com
- amazoncryptocurrencies.com
It took roughly half a day for someone to realize what Amazon had done, at which point news of the registrations began to spread like wildfire in online crypto forums.
Then the debates set in: was Amazon doing its due diligence in preparing for new crypto ventures, or were they just protecting their customers from scamsters posing as Amazon-backed domains?
Much ado about nothing?
We already know that Amazon bought the amazonbitcoin.com domain back in 2013.
Then, users also speculated that Amazon was preparing to make a move in the crypto space, but to this day nothing living up to that speculation has occurred—at least for now.
Clearly, then, in the very least Amazon has no short-term plans for these domains, otherwise the amazonbitcoin.com address would likely already be being used.
So what’s more probable here: Amazon staking out its rightful addresses for future endeavors, or doing pre-emptive maneuvering to buy up Amazon-themed names to mitigate potential scammers and defend their brand?
We lean toward thinking the latter, in that the Amazon Legal Department co-registered the domains in question. On that basis, this could just be a routine legal defense of the Amazon brand done at a timely time as the crypto craze continues to boom.
Though it’s not an open-and-shut case, is it? However improbable it may seem, Amazon is surely looking at the crypto space in some kind of capacity—even if it’s just research—seeing as how its competitor Overstock.com just started accepting crypto payments itself.
This competitive dynamic could nudge Amazon into cryptocurrencies sooner rather than later.
What would be huge news
With these three domains seemingly falling short of being bombshell developments for now, what unquestionably would be huge news is If Amazon purchased its own Ethereum Naming Service (ENS) address, for example.
That would show that Amazon as an institution has:
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- Signed up for a crypto exchange or multiple exchanges
- Bought cryptocurrency (in this case, ether)
- Gone through the somewhat non-intuitive process of buying an ENS address
These would be tell-tale signs that Amazon’s doing a whole lot more than just getting its feet wet.
The conference call that never was
As rumors have been flying as of late, some in the community thought they caught wind of a Bitcoin-related Amazon Q3 conference call just days ago.
Alas, though, nothing ever materialized, showing once more that many times stories can be more smoke than fire in cryptocurrency news cycles.
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