I don't see PayPal serious enough about the cryptocurrency market to turn into some sort of centralised exchange. The reason for this is that in my opinion Paypal added the ability of its customers to buy/sell crypto only as a "face" and to ensure that if crypto does end up handicapping the finance industry (which I think at some point in the future is inevitable) they will have a stand in it and won't be missing out.

Even if they were to adopt something like that in the future it won't make it any different from a centralised exchange like eToro, and definitely not close enough to DEX.

of course it can happen, nothing is impossible especially paypal has just announced that they accept crypto. if paypal opens a trading table it is possible that the crypto world will continue to grow, many companies will be interested because paypal opens its trading table. i would say binance will soon gain a very strong competitor

Though correlation is not causation, It most likely is the reason. It's also might be the reason why Square's Bitcoin-related revenue pretty much skyrocketed in Q2 and Q3 of 2020. I'd say it's a pretty safe assumption.

Since people can actually receive their stimulus checks through Cash App[1], whereas I assume they can immediately purchase bitcoin immediately after receiving the money, it will probably help. The question is, how significant of an effect is it?

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[1] https://cash.app/help/us/en-us/1018-cash-app-the-stimulus-and-you

No not possible. I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. We can just simply deposit Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin and hold it, but Paypal has the custody of our assets. They have a history of freezing accounts without any reason. As the old man said, “Not your keys, not your coins”.

As you can see, they didn't open an exchange immediately but are using another exchange as a medium to buy BTC for their customers who put their money in crypto through PayPal (at least that is what they wrote in it). Now, it's impossible for PayPal to match the total number of BTC's demand for their wide range of users which is why they are not allowing us to withdraw our crypto but just keep it inside, see it and sell it when we see the value increased. Do you really think they are looking into any such business like entering an exchange business, that too crypto? I don't think so.

It's not impossible! Paypal is a big business entity with ample of cash ready for investment. So if they sniff the opportunity to make big money out of crypto exchange business, then I see no reason for them not to start a full fledged crypto exchange!

Probably, they have Similar plan in the pipeline, who knows! Probably, they have just taken an initial step to understand more about the market and later they will come up some bigger plan.

Nothing is permanent is the world of business! One prime example is JPM's u-turn about crypto matters. So I won't be surprised if Paypal comes up with a full fledged crypto exchange platform in future!

An AI trader is easy to create.

The issue is the dataset.  Selecting the right variables and building the neural net.  A regular user will not have access to millions/billions of previous trades to train the ML algorithm. 

I mean, since PayPal already allows the trading of a few cryptocurrencies, then by definition it's already a "crypto exchange".

There's a huge difference though, and that is that PayPal already has 346 million users[1]. While the crypto trading service isn't available for everyone yet, just imagine how much people would have exposure to bitcoin. They wouldn't need to install and register on a separate app for their bitcoin purchases.

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[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/218493/paypals-total-active-registered-accounts-from-2010/

That has been mentioned below his post by @DdmrDdmr [1]

IMO since the article is from Bitidex exchange [2] it looks like they sort and gave that list by users differentiate each cites from that exchange

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[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5278870.msg55283032#msg55283032
[2] https://medium.com/@biditex/7-countries-with-the-most-bitcoin-hodlers-503b205d926f

There is much speculation about who holds the most crypto coins. Some believe that most of them are owned by large exchanges, funds or mining firms that use their position to influence the market in their favor.

list of the countries that have the most Bitcoin HODLers
1. The United States
2. Romania
3. China
4. Spain
5. Japan
6. Switzerland
7. South Korea


10 Cities That Are Bitcoin Hotpots
Here are the 10 leading cities as of early 2020:

1. San Francisco
2. Vancouver
3. Amsterdam (Amsterdam is home to mining hardware maker Bitfury and the European headquarters of payment service provider BitPay.)
4. Ljubljana, Slovenia
5. Tel Aviv
6. Zurich
7. Tampa, Florida
8. Buenos Aires
9. New York
10. London

Since the first block was mined in 2009

As Per Google Search Trends Data Past 5 Years Show Bitcoin Searches on Worldwide

1. Nigeria
2. Ghana
3. South Africa
4. Slovenia
5. Austria
6. Netherlands
7. Singapore
8. Switzerland
9. Australia
10. Pakistan

You wanna know the real reason?

0 - printers doing brrrr to buy treasury bonds
1- this makes negative real yields on bonds (this push money down)
As of 2017, the size of the worldwide bond market (total debt outstanding) is estimated at $100.13 trillion, 100 trillion is looking for alternative
2- interest on term deposits in banks are close to zero (this push money down)
3- corporate bonds risk of not being paid is bigger than expected ROI (this push money down)
4- inflation and fear of inflation getting bigger and bigger forces people to look for assets that will protect their funds from inflation by accepting even greater and greater risk (because safe assets guarantee a real loss (expected profit - inflation))
5- this push money to real estate makes them super expensive (3-4 % real profit from renting is still not enough to cover inflation)
6- this push money deeper and deeper (stocks and dividend profits) but they are cosmically overvalued and dividends are very small
As of December 31, 2019, the total market capitalization of all stocks worldwide was approximately US$70.75 trillion. so 70 trillion is looking for alternative
7- this push money deeper into very high risk assets (bitcoin) - the profit opportunity is usually better than the loss guarantee - and bitcoin is worth only 300 bil $ so even a small fraction moved from above assets will cause huge pump here.

This pump is not caused by Paypal or halving. Who TF takes care about paypal? We have 100000000 ways to buy crypto. Paypal is only another one. Pump is caused by panicked investors searching for good place to hide from inflation.

“The United States printed more money in June than in the first two centuries after its founding,” Morehead wrote. “Last month the U.S. budget deficit — $864 billion — was larger than the total debt incurred from 1776 through the end of 1979.”
https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-printed-more-money-in-one-month-than-in-two-centuries

"In response to the coronavirus, the Federal Reserve has printed approximately $3 trillion. The total assets of the Federal Reserve as of the end of February 2020 was $4.16 trillion. By the end of July, total assets was $6.95 trillion."
https://medium.com/discourse/do-you-realize-the-massive-amount-of-money-printing-happening-due-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic-1f4347cc0404