eBay Planning to Launch its Own Virtual Currency to Compete With Bitcoin

The PayPal unit of eBay has filed a patent application proposing secure tokens that could potentially be used as a virtual currency. The application, which was filed in June 2012 and published on Dec. 19, 2013, would let people buy products without creating a payment provider account. "The recipient can use the token to purchase a product using a checkout though the payment provider; the purchase can be made without requiring the user to create the user's own payment provider account," the filing reads.