eBay, the parent of PayPal, mentions bitcoin once in the company’s 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and that’s enough to cause a bit of a stir in the cryptocurrency community.

PayPal’s acceptance of bitcoin, after all, could cement the acceptance of cryptocurrencies across a much wider swath of e-commerce and payment exchange.

But eBay wasn’t necessarily hinting at acceptance, just listing 12 categories of competitors that PayPal currently faces in the fast-evolving payments industry on many levels — including online, mobile and at brick-and-mortar locations.

And more significantly, it mentions two U.S. bitcoin businesses that are at the top of startups serving businesses that are looking to accept payments in bitcoins: Coinbase and BitPay.

“The markets for PayPal’s products and services are intensely competitive and are subject to rapid technological change, including but not limited to: mobile payments, electronic funds transfer networks allowing Internet access, cross-border access to payment networks, creation of new payment networks, and new technologies for enabling merchants…” eBay said in its filing.

Then comes the list of competitor categories.

The 11th bullet item, out of 12 items, says the following: “services such as Coinbase and Bitpay that help merchants accept and manage virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.”

So far, PayPal has avoided accepting bitcoins, although PayPal President David Marcus actually owns bitcoins and has said that cryptocurrencies have the potential to revolutionize e-commerce and the payments industry. Marcus has said that he is concerned about regulatory issues, security and volatility tied to virtual currencies.

But the mention of bitcoin, Coinbase and BitPay makes it official: eBay is monitoring cryptocurrency development and may act to offset the growing competition from this is new sector.

Meanwhile, bitcoin startups continue to come up with new services for the growing list of bitcoin-accepting enterprises.

Last month, BitPay announced a beta release of their payroll API, which allows employers to give their W-2 workers a portion of their net pay in the virtual currency.

Silicon Valley’s Coinbase offers a bitcoin wallet, buying and selling of the virtual currency and a mechanism for merchants to accept bitcoins as payments. One of its executives is litecoin creator Charles Lee.

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