Data analytics giant Palantir now accepts Bitcoin payments

Palantir, a $30-billion Colorado-based data analytics company founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, now accepts Bitcoin from clients as a form of payment.

According to a CNBC report on Tuesday, Palantir said during its earnings call for the first quarter of 2021 that it had begun accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments. In addition, the firm is mulling following in Tesla’s and MicroStrategy’s footsteps by adding BTC to its balance sheet, saying the crypto asset was “definitely on the table.” Palantir likely has more than $2 billion in cash on hand for investments.

MicroStrategy was one of the first major firms to adopt Bitcoin as a reserve asset, making several multimillion-dollar crypto purchases in 2020 and 2021. Tesla entered the crypto space in February, announcing it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin. The car manufacturer later sold 10% of its crypto holdings “to prove liquidity of Bitcoin as an alternative to holding cash on balance sheet.”

Thiel also helped found PayPal, which launched crypto trading in late 2020. In April, PayPal-owned payments platform Venmo introduced crypto trading for BItcoin, Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).