One thing I find strange is why paypal CEO would be so supportive and vocal about bitcoin, while not direct competition to Paypal the success of bitcoin can certainly hurt Paypal in the future.
CEO Dan Schulman is supportive of Bitcoin and all other forms of crypto currency because Paypal has recently partnered with Coinbase to essentially protect its company from inflation and the devaluation of the US dollar which is the world reserve currency. Under the right conditions Paypal can survive if it can strategically stay within the Digital Payments arena as Shulman stated in the interview “the mass production of US dollars is wasteful” what he fails to divulge is that quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve hyper inflates the dollar which creates debt bubbles and devalues the dollar.
Regardless of how you personally feel about Paypal, it’s only a business like any other modern business, and like every corporation it needs to make money. And to do so it employs the most intelligent economists who know the difference between Keynesian Economics and Austrian Economics. And depending on the current global financial climate Paypal will always choose field advantage if it can fit within regulation. Again, Paypal is only a business; it doesn’t care about the Libertarian philosophies behind Bitcoin (although those are very important philosophies to have) Paypal is always positioned to evolve with the times and as a business must stay at the forefront of change and innovation. However, this will change over time as there are other centralized systems of control that could keep Paypal from evolving far into the future.
Thank you for your insight, that was actually an interesting new way to look at it, I would not be surprised one day to see Paypal launch a cryptocurrency of its own or purchase one such as utrust if it can become a success.
Thank you and I’m glad you enjoyed reading it. It’s very possible that Paypal could in fact launch its own token as Amazon has already launched its own coin , but not to be confused with “currency” Amazon has essentially created its own rewards based system to allow customers the option to redeem goods and services through their own internal tokenized platform.
Paypal on the other hand could accomplish something similar with Coinbase. But instead of using an Internal Tokenized Network they could use an External Network by allowing them to transfer what I would call a “Redemption Token” or digital coupon to Coinbase, the Redemption Token would serve as a means to redeem something of value. In such an event Paypal could successfully argue before the regulators that they’ve clearly stipulated in their agreements that they’re not held liable for user actions outside Paypal’s network.
This is where it gets good. Paypal would call it an action for the user to Redeem the “Transfer and Access” through a ‘Redemption Token’ which would be like a digital coupon, but would only pertain to the transfer its self. Their lawyers could argue before the regulators and win the case that anything can be redeemed and accessed at Coinbase not just cash or Bitcoin but the access to user bank accounts.
Such a move would save Paypal millions of dollars in both international transaction fees, tax fees, and compliance fees. And would, of course, limit end user fees. It would essentially place Paypal back on the map and closer to shapeshift.io
Yes, I fully agree -- Paypal is very expensive. In the near future Paypal would simply be seen as just another business on a decentralized platform and operating in a completely Free Market ecosystem.
What you should be worried about is the highly-monopolized Paypal of today. Because they’ve been operating under a very centralized financial system that’s controlled by FINCEN.
It’s very simply, if you can either limit or abolish the governments power then Paypal would not function under so much regulation and red-tape and could eventually function as a regular company again in the free market. Right now, if you have a complaint they’re not obligated to pickup the phone and that’s because “the people” have no voice and no say. But the more decentralized our societies become the more OUR voices will be heard! Not as a group or a collective but as individuals, because you can’t show me a country without showing me the individual person.
Thank you for your time,