A patent for gift tokens filed by eBay at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office could signal the creation of an alternative to Bitcoin for use with PayPal, according to PandoDaily.

"Systems and methods are disclosed for giving gifts in the form of secure tokens," reads eBay's patent, which was published on Dec. 19.

"A gift or payment instrument can be given from a user of a payment provider, such as Paypal, Inc., to a gift recipient," the patent application said. "The recipient can be a member of the user's family, a friend, a sub-contractor, or any other person or entity. The recipient can use the token to purchase a product using the payment provider. The purchase can be made from a brick-and-mortar store or an online store. The purchase can be made without requiring the user to create the user's own payment provider account."

The patent was originally filed on June 12, 2012.

"It's clear that eBay's intention is to use the idea of gift tokens with PayPal, which has been the company's payment arm since it was acquired in 2002 for $1.5 billion," said Bitcoin news provider CoinDesk.

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