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Leans into mic
Pass.
But why? To avoid banking regulations or what?
I don't understand what this provides. They already make it so you don't have to give out credit card info. Is it just to avoid bank fees in some way? Avoid banking regulation?
Stablecoins are kind of unique because their goal is to be... Well.... Stable. they are working as designed if their value is exactly pegged to $1.
Which means that if you manage a stablecoin, you accept other people's dollars, and give them these tokens in exchange. When those people come back to redeem them, whether it's next month or 50 years from now, they are expecting to get the same number of dollars back.
Tether is the top stablecoin in the Crypto Universe. It is traded on several Crypto exchanges, and can somehow maintain it's peg to USD no matter how many trades there are. Tether's Market Cap is currently over $80B dollars, and the Hong Kong company that maintains it promises it's all backed by cash or cash equivalents. Many people are skeptical, because that's a Metric Fuckload of cash, and while Tether has released some things it says are proof of reserves, they have never been able to release a full audit. But even an idiot money manager can make a ton of money if they have a kitty of $80B to manage, with no expectation of any return.
So it's possible that Paypal isn't satisfied to just hold it's own customers money, and wants a piece of that Tether float....
But isn't the point of cryptocurrencies to not be bound to a central authority?
Wow. Yeah, even if they literally just had it in a bank account, which I think can't even be considered an investment, the interest on that would be very substantial.
This is like $$, but with extra steps and burning a lot of fossil fuels.
burning a lot of fossil fuels.
FUD. PYUSD is an ERC20 token, using the Ethereum network, which means it's far more efficient than credit card processing programs at the moment.
Now, don't get me wrong. PYUSD is stupid and I'll never use it. And the whole point of crypto is so that companies can't control your money.
But being inefficient and burning fissile fuels is not one of those negatives about it.
**note - there are a few cryptos, especially first generation that are highly inefficient and do burn lots of fissile fuels, like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc.
But Ethereum adopted proof of stake somewhat recently, so is now far more efficient.
PayPal can just up and freeze your account at any moment, keeping all of your money locked away. I've read of several ebay sellers who've used PayPal before and ran into Issues when trying to withdraw. If I wouldn't trust them with regular payments, why would they be anymore appealing as a crypto coin?
No. I don't think I will.
Since all the comments are reflexively negative cuz crypto is filled with scams and nonsense with no need I’ll explain why this is actually useful in some scenarios i and friends had experiences with.
Trans artists can now accept commission payments without revealing their deadname. (Before this my friend had to rely on actual crypto like bitcoin which had high fees, and if they didn’t immediately transfer out to their bank it wasnt a stable price)
Friends who are no longer a citizen of a country (escaping russia due to death threats and lgbt status), or are seeking asylum (due to ukraine being invaded, south american coups by the US making their country unsafe), can now accept a stable currency thats not super shady and backed by a company with a professional reputation (friend had a company hire them to teach painting online and the company learned how to use the shady coin Tether to pay them because there is no way they can open a bank account for now. They accept crypto and then trade it locally for pesos/dollars)
Accept donations from any country without revealing your full name. Paypal is one of the few services that is accepted worldwide and this stablecoin makes it even easier for south americans to receive donations safely without making their full name publicly available to trolls/harassers.
These have always been potential benefits of crypto. If paypal makes these actually attainable without all the other burdensome bullshit that would be awesome.
I doubt paypal would work this way in russia or other troubled countries tho. They've banned a couple of my friends without stating a reason for being under shithole states. Just crypto feels more reliable than that sort of pp-backed crypto.
I guess the purpose of this PayPal coin is the same as Tether: to circumvent some of the regulations that comes when trading cryptocurrencies with real USD.
They will probably require some KYC verification process before you can buy the coin, so PayPal will know exactly who you are. It’s up to PayPal to reveal your registered name or not.
I also doubt they will allow to send the coin to people outside US. They explicitly state in the page that it’s for US customers only.
You bring up good points about it being potentially useful for facilitating the movement of money across borders (and potentially doing so more anonymously now) within the PayPal ecosystem with fewer fees, but it's an unnecessary step for pretty much anything else within PayPal as far as I'm concerned. It's also definitely a bad place to park money long term unless you like inflation eating away at your buying power.
I'm not sure what you mean about high fees with Bitcoin, though, are you talking about exchange fees from fiat to Bitcoin and vice versa? I rarely pay any fees simply moving Bitcoin around.
Bitcoin has high fees if you’re moving Bitcoin between wallets within the blockchain. You don’t pay fees if you’re moving Bitcoin between wallets within the exchange, because those transactions aren’t registered to the blockchain. It’s essentially just registered into the exchanges internal spreadsheets.
Oh boy can't wait to try out this ponzi scheme
How is a stabletoken pegged to the US dollar a "ponzi scheme?" You don't earn anything by holding it.
The buzzword stablecoin sort of lost its luster when all of those stablecoins crashed at the same time as the unstable ones lol
From fucking PayPal?? It's one of the worst companies in the world and has entire websites dedicated to hating it. :)
What's next for this cutting edge product team? Pogs? Beanie Babies? Silly bands? Poker? Jazzercise? Tulips?
Maybe they can offer new shares in the hot technology of terrestrial radio.
Not gonna lie, if PayPal releases a line of Pogs, I am all in.
Oh boy now I can wade through bullshit crypto nonsense when I use PayPal too, how fun.
Oh good, another bullshit Ethereum backed token...just what the world needed.
oh yay … company scrip …
They literally made Itchy and Scratchy money real
Seems premature, while the SEC is still trying to treat every crypto like a security. This thing seems, on the surface, to be even more like a security than Ripple, since it's a stablecoin and there's an inherent promise that it will always be tied to the dollar....
Stablecoins seem like one of the least likely token types to count as a security. To be a security it has to pass the "Howey test", which requires three criteria:
- An investment of money
- In a common enterprise
- With an expectation of profit, derived from the efforts of others
Buying a stabletoken could be argued to be "an investment of money in an common enterprise", but I don't see how there's an expectation of profit derived from the efforts of others - stabletokens are specifically intended to not rise in value. If I buy a stabletoken and its value goes up it's a failure as a stabletoken.
Ew.
Please no.
I’m sure this will end well.
Until PayPal decides to censure you and close your account?
I should have closed my account with them years ago so thanks for giving me a reason to do it today, PayPal!
I can't decide if I dislike PayPal or Tether more. But I guess it's another onramp which I guess is a good thing for the ecosystem.
SEC smells fresh meat
A lot of explanation on how to use it, and zero reasons given on why anyone should bother. Aside from the fact that it sounds fishy as hell, what's the point of sending fake crypto-dollars compared to real money?
L o l
Everyone should be using monero, a truly anonymous and untracable coin comparable to cash