You already have a PayPal account, and you’d rather not go through the hassle of buying Bitcoin through other means. You may also know that PayPal has mostly looked favorably upon buying Bitcoin, and since late , you can buy cryptocurrencies using PayPal wallet. All you need to do is have a funded PayPal account, choose the cryptocurrency you want to buy, and confirm your purchase.

However, buying bitcoin on PayPal has its own caveats. Most importantly, PayPal does not allow you to withdraw your crypto assets into a private self-hosted wallet, meaning that you won't be able to use it for anything else but selling it back to PayPal once its price goes up or down. The essence of cryptocurrency is the ability to own private digital cash without having to rely on any intermediaries and send or receive them in a censorship-resistant way. At least for now, getting cryptocurrency via PayPal is a safe way to get exposure to the asset class, but it does not let you use it in ways it was made to be used - as a free and open peer-to-peer (P2P) financial system without trusted intermediaries.

This is why we prepared five methods to buy Bitcoin with PayPal instantly (well, not in every case). The problem with using PayPal as a payment method is that it permits chargebacks, while Bitcoin does not: there are scammers who buy Bitcoin with PayPal from you and then claim they didn’t receive anything. That is why the selection of alternative purchase methods is limited. However, having your own bitcoin that you can send and receive freely and without any restrictions might be worth the hassle.

1. Buy Bitcoin with eToro

At the time of writing, eToro has recently released its eToro crypto wallet, which allows you to store Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash, and Ripple directly from its trading platform. The trading platform allows you to buy Bitcoins with PayPal but you need to withdraw them into eToro wallet to be able to withdraw them elsewhere or send them to other people.

Getting Bitcoins via eToro is by far the easiest and most-beginner friendly way. Besides, PayPal, it also supports a multitude of other deposit methods. In most cases, your initial deposit needs to be at least $

2. Get Bitcoins via PayPal and Virwox

Virwox is the Virtual World Exchange. You can buy a virtual currency called SLL (Second Life Linden Dollars), from Second Life - one of the biggest virtual worlds - using PayPal, and then trade it for Bitcoin. However, Virwox limits the amount you can initially deposit through PayPal or credit card, the transaction fees are much higher than usual, and Virwox is delaying new user transactions for up to 48 hours.

3. Purchase BTC via LocalBitcoins

One of the most popular exchanges that is not really an exchange, LocalBitcoins is more of a website that offers you the possibility of finding people in your vicinity selling Bitcoin, and they make their own rules about which payment methods they accept. This means there is a chance they will take PayPal payments too.

4. Use Wirex and PayPal to Get BTC

Wirex is a company that supplies virtual and physical Bitcoin debit cards. Since it’s just like any other debit card you can use Wirex’s card with your PayPal account. Still, this takes an incredibly long time to complete - up to 10 days at a time, depending on where you live.

5. Buy Bitcoin with PayPal using Paxful

Paxful is incredibly similar to LocalBitcoins, but it is smaller and less known. When you create an account, you choose your preferred payment method and the amount you want to buy, and either choose a seller manually or let Paxful find one for you. The drawbacks are high exchange rates and the possibility of getting scammed.

If none of these work for you, you may want to reconsider using PayPal as other options can be more secure and quicker than this.