PayPal missed on crypto losses — and just doubled down on stablecoins

PayPal missed analyst EPS estimates by two cents — and the shortfall wasn't operational weakness, it was an $81 million non-GAAP adjustment tied to marking crypto assets on the company's balance sheet to market. In the same earnings report, PayPal announced it's expanding into three new areas at once: agentic payments, stablecoins, and biometric identification, Cointelegraph reports.

• Revenue: $8.68 billion, above the $8.47 billion forecast and up 4.7% year over year
• EPS: $1.26 versus a $1.28 estimate; the shortfall is directly attributed to $81 million in unrealized crypto asset losses
• PYUSD stablecoin has expanded to 70 markets worldwide
• The PayPal World platform processed roughly $200 million in payments between Venmo and PayPal

"Agentic payments" means transactions an AI agent carries out on its own, without a human directly present at the moment of payment. PayPal describes the expansion as applying its existing payments network, risk infrastructure, and trust mechanisms to a new kind of payer — not a person, but an autonomous program acting on one. Biometric identification is meant to cover the adjacent problem: verifying identity without a password, whether for a person or their agent, BigGo Finance notes.

We've covered how Coinbase launched a similar payment stack letting businesses accept payments from AI agents over the x402 protocol — Coinbase launches a payment stack for AI agent payments; PayPal is moving into the same territory, just with far more reach through its existing payments network.

There's a certain irony here: the company's profit slipped this quarter specifically because it holds crypto assets, and that same earnings report is being used to announce a deeper bet on crypto infrastructure. Caution in the moment and a strategic bet on the future are, apparently, two different things for PayPal.

*This piece is informational, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset.*