Deal has ended, view more PayPal deals by clicking here.
Update 11/8/21: More people targeted.
Update 10/10/21: Deal is back and valid until December 25, 2021
Update 7/15/21: Deal is back and valid until September 25, 2021.
Contents
The Offer
- PayPal is offering a reward of $25 when you purchase $25 in Cryptocurrency
Our Verdict
I’m sure the crypto rates PayPal offers aren’t great, but considering this is buy $10 and get $10 it should still be worth doing. Previously there was a deal where you could get $25, but that required spending $100. (looks like that is available again as well).
Post history:
- Update 6/1/21: Deal is back and valid until 6/25/2021.
- Update 5/4/21: Deal is back again. Valid 11:59 p.m. ET on May 26, 2021.
- Update 3/5/21: Deal is back again. Valid 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time (“ET”) on March 1, 2021 and ends at 11:59 p.m. ET on March 27, 2021
got offer. How long did you wait before bonus got posted?
received email:
You’ve received a $25.00 USD Reward.
This reward will be automatically applied to your next eligible purchase when you checkout with PayPal. Once redeemed, your Reward will be reflected on your PayPal receipt or in your PayPal transaction details. Thanks again for being a great PayPal customer.
any ideas how to spend it?
I am also clueless. They don’t make it clear. “WE’LL AUTOMATICALLY APPLY YOUR DISCOUNT!” HAHHAHA
It shows up when you checkout with PayPal. Just buy a gift card from PayPal’s store.
I’m already super deep into crypto so no worries about not wanting the IRS to know. I’m reporting everything. So this was an easy $25 for me. They don’t even require you to confirm your information if you’re just purchasing. It’s only when you go to sell it. I’m just going to let this BTC sit there and chill and probably never sell it. Basically free BTC.
“We’re sorry, you’re not eligible for this offer.”
Maybe on the next crypto price dip
I got it, but I do not want to deal with the potential increase in audit probability with IRS. Not for 25 bucks.
As long as you don’t sell it, there is no tax issue.
Once you’ve gotten the matching $25 or BTC equivalent that’s income. However a potential rise of BTC and sale would be a capital gain on the $25 basis.
I do not think that you are correct in this situation because of how they give the $25 reward. When you purchase the crypto with Paypal they are not giving you cash income (or deposit into your Paypal account) in exchange or a discount on the purchase, they give you a coupon/discount on a future purchase. Have you ever paid income tax on coupons/discounts that you have received? Not financial advice and I’m not a tax advisor but receiving a coupon towards a future purchase is not the same thing as receiving a discount on your initial purchase. I think it would lower the cost-basis of whatever you purchase with the coupon/discount.
It’s not the $25 paypal bonus I care about, it’s the check on the 1040 form about buying or selling crypto when filing taxes. When I feel like speculating on crypto, I prefer to buy crypto stocks.
Yes, I was addressing Jay’s comment in the response above. I addressed your comment in the response below. Of course if your have some fear about buying crypto and the IRS then it would not make sense for you to participate in a crypto deal. Many millions of people in the US own/trade crypto and report it on their tax filings, it is the ones who do not check the box but trade crypto that they are concerned about, not the ones who do check the box and report. Audits are sometimes done randomly, but often are triggered due to consistencies in what you report on your filing and transaction/income reports they receive from banks/businesses. So if you do the deal, be sure to report your crypto trade(s) to the IRS…not rocket science.
Just fyi Paypal appears to only confirm information for the IRS when you go to sell the crypto not when you buy. I am not really concerned about being audited since I report everything (I think the people being targeted are those who say they do not have crypto but IRS receive notice that you did trade crypto, or just who fail to report some source of income in general), I think for most people the bigger concern is appropriately reporting the crypto trade on your Schedule D. Not financial advice and I could understand why somebody who does not otherwise deal with crypto would not want to have to report just one trade.
I got the same $25 offer on Bakkt today
Not eligible. Just another reason to hate PP.
I did the offer and got the $25 credit almost instantly.
How can I redeem this credit? Do I have to buy a GC in the Paypal platform?
Or can it be applied to any purchase using paypal as a payment method?
You will see it applied in PayPal checkout.
“Something’s not right. Please try again later.” I’ve gotten this message for a couple of days. I see the offer on my personal landing page so I should be eligible. Did I already add it the offer and not realize it? Is there a way to check somewhere?
I got the same error message for like a week, after a week, it’s activated as of now.
Not eligible, but did see a $10 referral offer with a friend’s $5 crypto purchase. I’m too bitter at not getting the $25 offer to play this game though:
“Invite a friend and you can earn $10 cash. When your friends use your link to buy their first $5 of crypto, you can both earn $10 each. Up to $50 in total.” https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/crypto/invite