As Bitcoin experiences rapidly increasing institutional interest, Bitcoin companies may soon find themselves wooed by legacy finance and technology companies, anticipates Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz.

In an interview with Bloomberg Technology on Friday, Novogratz predicted that within a year's time, major credit card companies such as VISA, MasterCard, and American Express would follow into PayPal's footsteps and launch offerings for merchants to transact in stablecoins and cryptocurrencies.

The problem: while today's leaders in payments may excel in the legacy finance domain, they start at zero with Bitcoin.

"If you look at PayPal, they're a tech company. Yet they needed to bring in Paxos to do their Bitcoin integration," Novogratz commented on the payment giant's move to allow U.S. users to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin on its platform.

Technology companies focused on Bitcoin infrastructure have had years to further their expertise and expand their offering, giving them a head start over the multi-billion dollar competition.

But where there is money, there is a way, and consequently, Novogratz showed himself unsurprised when asked about recent reports of acquisition talks between PayPal and cryptocurrency custodian BitGo. While Novogratz, whose firm is invested in BitGo, said he wouldn't know if the rumours were true, he anticipates a trend of acquisitions either way:

There’s a lot of domain expertise and knowledge in the crypto community that’s been built over the last seven, eight years, that the legacy community - even the tech guys - need some of. So there’s going to be a war for talent, there will be a war for companies that are building infrastructure, it’s going to suck in talent.
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