# PayPal Shares Lost 73% in Six Years After Crypto Wallet Launch

By Enna Lee

Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/investing/37179
Published: 2026-10-21T23:44:21.000Z
Updated: 2026-10-21T23:44:21.000Z
Section: Investing

> A $1,000 investment at the stock’s Oct. 21, 2020, close was worth $268.41 at its Oct. 21, 2026, close, excluding fees, taxes and dividends.

A $1,000 investment in PayPal shares on the day the company announced its crypto wallet was worth $268.41 six years later, after the stock fell 73%. The comparison uses the shares’ closing prices on Oct. 21, 2020, and Oct. 21, 2026.

PayPal closed at $213.07 on Oct. 21, 2020, and $57.19 on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, at 4 p.m. ET (20:00 UTC). The initial investment would have bought about 4.6933 shares. The price-return calculation excludes fees, taxes and dividends.

PayPal announced its digital-wallet cryptocurrency service on Oct. 21, 2020. Customers could buy, hold and sell Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) through the wallet. PayPal said customers would eventually be able to use crypto for purchases at its 26 million merchants.

For those purchases, PayPal planned to convert customers’ crypto balances into fiat currency for settlement, so merchants would receive fiat. The service was enabled through a partnership with Paxos Trust Company. By Nov. 12, 2020, all eligible U.S. accountholders could buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency through PayPal.

“The shift to digital forms of currencies is inevitable,” Dan Schulman, PayPal’s president and CEO at the time, said in 2020.

The figures track PayPal shares, not the performance of its crypto service. They also do not establish that the company’s crypto announcement caused the stock’s decline.