23 ms·

PayPal to allow cryptocurrency buying, selling and shopping on its network

942 points by epaga 6y ago

iRomain 6y ago
This is great for driving adoption of cryptocurrencies! However, the unwanted side effect is also the growth of centralized currencies used as "cash you can track" by governments. And we can be certain PayPal will know exactly where to steer their users...
- raesene9 6y ago
  unfortunately for most commercial transactions related to cryptocurrency (at scale) decentralization already seems largely dead. When you look at the aftermath of exchange hacks (e.g. the recent kucoin hack), and see how quickly funds are frozen by various other exchanges, you can see the direction of travel, especially when combined with the uptick of regulatory interest (e.g. BitMex) Edit: As this is attracting some downvotes, how about some citations. On Kucoin From(https://www.coindesk.com/kucoin-crypto-hack-laundering https://www.coindesk.com/kucoin-crypto-hack-laundering) "The hackers have largely failed to sell those tokens on closely guarded centralized exchanges which quickly flag and often block hacked funds." On BitMex from(https://www.coindesk.com/bitmex-accelerates-identity-verification-kyc https://www.coindesk.com/bitmex-accelerates-identity-verific...) "BitMEX Accelerates Mandatory ID Verification After Charges of Lax Anti-Money Laundering Controls"
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    > and see how quickly funds are frozen by various other exchanges As long as this is a community decision, I don't see a problem. Centralization would need a central authority to decide which coins to freeze.
    - raesene9 6y ago
      It's not a community decision, it's a decision by private corporations (binance, coinbase et al) often driven by government regulation (e.g. KYC)
    - gruez 6y ago
      So if I accept bitcoin as payments, do I have to keep to up to date with all the blacklists that are out there? Otherwise I might end up accepting coins that are "blacklisted" and are worthless. Who is the authoritative source for these blacklists? Are merchants forced to subscribe to every blacklist out there, in fear that even some chance of accepting blacklisted coins is too much? We kind of see this in action in the fiat world, with payment providers freezing accounts that sent transactions with certain keywords.
  - ckastner 6y ago
    > As this is attracting some downvotes, how about some citations Crypto is one of the few topics on HN that has an extremely aggressive following. The followers may not be that numerous, but they'll downvote (and fast, too) on an emotional basis, rather than a rational one, and will thus even downvote simple facts when they displease them. (not referring to my own posts on crypto, which are at least somewhat opiniated.)
    - ejanus 6y ago
      I believe that some of the people here are also holders of cryptocurrencies.
    - ulzeraj 6y ago
      So just like socialism. The other day I've politely questioned how price discovery would be possible on socialist economies and got downvoted to oblivion without a single argument. Yeah I'm expecting downvotes for this one also...
      - justaguyhere 6y ago
        I've also seen downvotes if I ever criticize landlords on HN, even when they are valid criticisms.
        datameta 6y ago
        Not to disparage your point or the parent comment's but I think part of that is that HN operates to a much lesser degree like an echo chamber (as the majority of social network are wont to steer toward) so it might come as more of a surprise when someone disagrees. Of course I feel I should highlight the obvious fact that discourse is far more valuable than trying to quietly silence a differing opinion...
      - smolder 6y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987760 I don't know that this was politely questioned. I do think your tone had a factor in the downvotes.
  - hjorthjort 6y ago
    There are always decentralized exchanges. I think eventually people will get used to the UX of handling their own keys and prefer it over keeping their coins in exchanges. Either that, or banks will start doing crypto custody and government will guarantee the assets. But I think that's less likely, I don't see banks inviting the risk of managing crypto keys.
    - raesene9 6y ago
      There are decentralized exchanges, the question is whether they'll see large scale adoption, particularly from less technical astute users. Also to be successful for the general public, they'll need fiat on and off ramps (at least in the short-->medium term). At the moment most of those go via the centralized exchanges...
      - hjorthjort 6y ago
        Sure, but all it takes is centralized one on-ramp that will take you, then you can transfer out of it. That's a big difference from having your funds in a particular exchange, where it may be seized. I agree with the UX problem. I think the decentralized exchanges will manage to scale, research is ongoing. And the UX of decentralized exchanges is not much worse than/different from using Coinbase or Kraken, for example. The big UX challenge is self-custody of keys.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        I'm hardly a crypto stan but it feels somewhat odd to see so many naysayers on decentralized exchanges right as they are picking up huge amounts of steam. KYC will be dead as soon as there is a liquid decentralized atomic swap for monero
        Sargos 6y ago
        The Aztec L2 for Ethereum uses zkSNARKS for privacy and allows for execution which means a decentralized exchange can be made in a fully private environment. It just released but it's a very exciting protocol for those who like Monero.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Am I correct in that the definition of "freezing" here is private company refuses to do business with marked cash? And that a private company who is hacked (and was previously the custodian of a customer's tokens) makes it more difficult to retrieve same through its machinery? Per your link, "Still, by Monday, Elliptic said that hackers had already flipped millions of stolen tokens for $7.5 million in ethereum (ETH) on decentralized exchanges (DEX) Kyber Network and Uniswap." So the "problem" is that companies are making decisions for themselves (admittedly, approaching the way Google and Apple can make decisions "for themselves"), and that people who were given control of assets are controlling them. Decentralization seems fine from a protocol perspective, these are just effects of human behavior.
    - mihaifm 6y ago
      > Am I correct in that the definition of "freezing" here is private company refuses to do business with marked cash? Yea that's correct. They track the coins as they flow from one address to another. It can be increasingly difficult once the funds are divided, but entirely possible with automation. It's worth noting that this is not possible with some privacy focused cryptocurrencies like Monero.
    - HenryBemis 6y ago
      It is like saying: "I robbed a bank ang got away with $1m, all in $20 bills. The bank has the numbers of the bills I stole. I can no longer use these notes as they will be flagged/raise an alarm if I try to deposit them in another bank." Absolutely plausible scenario. If one stole $1m from a bank, the value of those bill are no longer $1m. But if that someone can use mules, distribute the money across the city (assuming a big city), ask the mules to spend this on the same day, in various locations, then the value of that $1m will drop to $500k. The reason: mules need a cut, mediators need a cut, value of items purchased, etc. In that sense, I expect that those "decentralized exchanges" should have large fees, large spreads, etc, practically mimicking the cost of running a 'mules' network.
    - lawn 6y ago
      This is exactly the problem that Monero tries to solve. There you cannot trace transactions or "taint" them, so you don't have to worry that a drug dealer might pay you and you'll get your account locked.
  - rossjudson 6y ago
    Cryptocurrencies are used when you want to hide, or speculatively profit from crime without doing crime. Large scale legitimate transactions don't need to hide, and actively don't want to (the books must balance).
- gwbas1c 6y ago
  > "cash you can track" Uhm, the blockchain is a ledger of all transactions. It's "cash you can track", and pseudoanonymous at best.
  - exdsq 6y ago
    Not really... you can use mixers to obfuscate non-anonymous coins and there are privacy specific coins which allow for anonymous transactions
    - emptysongglass 6y ago
      People: commenter is correct. It's absurdly easy to anonymize txns on a blockchain, especially if you leverage cross-chains like Incognito.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      I mean, if you’re willing to risk big fines for money laundering... https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-financial-watchdog-fines-early-bitcoin-mixer-60m-for-money-laundering/amp https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-financial-watchdog-fines-e...
      - vmchale 6y ago
        That's the person running the tumbler, no? I think there were criminal charges too.
      - SilasX 6y ago
        From an informed comment on the recent discussion of that, the fine was from doing that while being a money transmitter i.e. also dealing in fiat currencies, not for the crypo mixer per se. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24829562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24829562
        andreareina 6y ago
        I read that comment as saying it doesn't require touching fiat. Bitcoin is a currency, so doing any sort of store-and-forward of it makes you a money transmitter. > For traditional Bitcoin mixers as in this case, someone receives money from users and then transmits money to many users. This is money transmission and requires registration with FinCEN and sometimes requires registration with states (though some states have exemptions for completely crypto to crypto transmission that doesn't touch USD or other fiat). Some states having exceptions for pure crypto transmission implies that most states don't.
- mihaifm 6y ago
  "not your keys not your coin" has been advocated for years on any discussion board, unfortunately it's falling on death ears. Typical users just like the convenience of centralized exchanges and "attractive" offers like this one.
  - triclops200 6y ago
    While "death ears" sounds like a great metal band name, the correct expression is "deaf ears" :)
  - javert 6y ago
    I think it's OK to use centralized services for small amounts of cryptocurrency, just like you would put a small amount of cash in your wallet. For large amounts, use cold wallets. Not your keys, not your coin.
    - qertoip 6y ago
      Privacy is a big reason to not use custodians even for small amounts.
      - javert 6y ago
        I don't view privacy as attainable with cryptocurrency anyway.
        ric2b 6y ago
        It is with Monero.
  - vmception 6y ago
    Oh it’s not, the people that take that most to heart just start running exchanges and services because they get a lot of coin and big keys
- slickrick216 6y ago
  All in chainlink
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  In my almost a bitcoin millionare story, I abandoned bitcoin in the early days (cpu days!) because I saw this as the real issue at hand. It jaded me from the market and I haven't really got into it since, but monero and zcash seem to be the two that have the best privacy features. I think ethereum has been working on this more also.
- tgv 6y ago
  Yeah, crime just started paying better.
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
  > This is great for driving adoption of cryptocurrencies! I don't follow cryptocurrency evolution on a regular basis -- in fact it's grown far beyond what I understood when I was BTC mining for fun a decade ago! I did some googling and see literally hundreds of them now. Is the goal CC enthusiasts to see a world with one main CC or a fragmented world of many, all exchanging at different rates?
raesene9 6y ago
This should be interesting. I'll be particularly interested in seeing how Paypal handles KYC for the cryptocurrencies it buys and how it manages pricing variations, where they're paying merchants in Fiat. Also all the people at Tether can plan to print themselves some new coins --> BTC and then go on a shopping spree :P (for the humour impaired, this bit is a joke)
- xorcist 6y ago
  It is not certain they will do anything that makes price variations a concern. Now they'll simply allow their customers to buy and sell. On the KYC front, actors like Paypal (and Square, Braintree and so on) are in a very good position, as they are already payment processors and fully compliant with those regulations. That is something smaller upstarts struggle with, not the established ones. It can even benefit them as a moat.
  - raesene9 6y ago
    If I read the article correctly it said that Paypal would take payement in cryptocurrencies and then pay the merchants with fiat. That means they will need to hedge the risk of a change in exchange rate between buying and settlement (for example paypal offers to settle payment 14 days after payment as a service). Now they can do that, but it'll take some effort. On KYC I'd agree they're in a better position, but it seems like they'll still need to beef up their processes, as regulators are quite interested in proving where cryptocurrencies came from. They'll not want to be caught with a load of coins that came from the latest ransomware incident.
    - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
      >but it seems like they'll still need to beef up their processes, as regulators are quite interested in proving where cryptocurrencies came from. Perhaps PayPal will only allow people to pay with cryptocurrency they have bought from PayPal in the first instance. So there wouldn't be any incoming our outgoing movements of cryptocurrency at all.
- 6y ago
jahn716 6y ago
Potentially great news for adoption Potentially good news for HODLers Potentially bad news for decentralization
- actuator 6y ago
  After the 2017-18 craze, I don't know if HODLers have gained anything on stock market. It has almost followed the broad stock market movement these days. Look at the covid crash in March, coins like BTC also dipped and peformed worse than indexes like Nasdaq while traditional currency hedge gold rose in value when both of them were crashing.
  - geogra4 6y ago
    yeah from what I can tell BTC is more correlated with tech stocks than anything
    - xorcist 6y ago
      The covid crash was a liquidity crisis. Gold crashed hard, too. The correlation is just that they're not USD.
      - actuator 6y ago
        Gold dipped slightly and rose fast, nothing compared to what happened to say BTC or the big indices. Gold dipped by 10% from its peak when lowest, BTC by 50%
        raziel2701 6y ago
        If I had bought gold and btc at their covid lowest I'd be up 30% with gold, and up 160% with btc. That's some serious performance. Some stocks went up like crazy though, for comparison: TSLA is up 470% ZM up 400% NVDA up 200% S&P 500 (SPY) up 58% Nasdaq (QQQ) up 70% SHOP up 230 %
vienarr 6y ago
“We are working with central banks and thinking of all forms of digital currencies and how PayPal can play a role,” does that mean a 'centralized' entity will try to facilitate payment based on 'decentralized' currency wow
kuroguro 6y ago
I wonder if they'll allow restoring accounts that were banned for crypto trading. They were pretty hard against it in the beginning IIRC.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  That is decentralized crypto trading: send money in PayPal to a person, and he promises to give you Bitcoin in exchange. In that case there's no way for PayPal to know if sending Bitcoin took place or not. If Paypal verifies both transactions (Bitcoin and fiat), this problem goes away, and all KYC laws are followed.
jatsign 6y ago
Curious that Bitcoin topped $12k for the first time in a long while yesterday. Makes me wonder who knew in advance. Being in cryptocurrencies has made me cynical.
- simias 6y ago
  I don't even try to make sense of bitcoin trends anymore. You might as well try to interpret shapes is clouds. Bitcoin has been in an upward trend since early September for no discernible reason (to me at least).
  - AzzieElbab 6y ago
    Just like all the other assets these days
  - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
    Was hanging at 10-11 and shot up (eh) after Square invested 1% (50m) of their assets. Has been a steady rise (dont know trade terms 'scuse me), I:m assuming it might stay or jump a few more k. Disclaimer: I don't trade.
  - acesubido 6y ago
    > Bitcoin has been in an upward trend since early September for no discernible reason (to me at least). I think it's mainly due to purchases from institutions that believe that Bitcoin is a safe haven asset during the lockdowns. The spiel is: it's protection from currency debasement due to Central Banks everywhere printing out at low interest rates for the pandemic. - Square spread 50MUSD worth buys @ 10K USD early October [1] - Microstrategy spread 425M buys from 9-10K USD around August - September [2] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/08/square-buys-50-million-in-bitcoin-says-cryptocurrency-aligns-with-companys-purpose.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/08/square-buys-50-million-in-bi... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherbrookins/2020/08/14/microstrategy-just-sent-green-light-to-corporate-america-on-bitcoin/#1e6b9f836bc4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherbrookins/2020/08/14/...
    - 6y ago
iDemonix 6y ago
They could be giving it out for free, to be honest, I still wouldn't ever go back to using their services.
- xwdv 6y ago
  Why are you taking it so personal, it's just business. Let it go.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    I don't believe GP is taking it personally, can one not have a poor business relationship and be put of dealing with the other party again?
  - axaxs 6y ago
    I don't see hatred of PayPal as personal, their service is awful. Randomly charging your bank account instead of credit card. Holding money for 3 weeks for no apparent reason. Most amusingly, I had some small amount of foreign currency in my account somehow I couldn't get rid of. It was too little to convert to USD according to their system. In the end I had to delete my account and agree to forfeit all my fractions of a dollar of money. Their service is objectively terrible.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I've gotta say, I wouldn't have expected them to allow cryptocurrency before allowing guns and obscenity.
aww_dang 6y ago
The wording wasn't clear. They claim they will allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, but will they allow them to send these currencies out of their network? >Cryptocurrency payments on PayPal will be settled using fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, meaning merchants will not receive payments in virtual coins, the company said Will users be able to take coins out of PayPal and send them to merchants, or will this be another walled garden? If PayPal's policies and fees weren't so difficult, many merchants wouldn't be into cryptocurrencies in the first place.
- afrojack123 6y ago
  Its a walled garden. Cryptocurrency is federal, nation level politics. Many people have been beaten up over currency. It is a massive power to be able to force the the rest of the world to use your money for international trade and only you have the right to print that money.
  - aww_dang 6y ago
    Talk of the "post dollar world" and the "cashless society" has been going on for more than a decade. There was a time when if you said people would wear tracking chips you'd be labeled a kook. Today people willingly carry smart phones connected to social networks. The disruption is similar in both cases. The result is predictable. The goals have already been stated at Davos.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
Nice! A private company gets to decide how and when we can spend our money. Thanks PayPal. In all seriousness this kind of thing should be decided upon with public debate and discourse, where pseudo banks and payment processors are compelled to accept crypto currencies if the law and the people deem them as legal tender.
- pjc50 6y ago
  > deem them as legal tender. That's .. not going to happen, unless one of the "central bank cryptocurrencies" goes live.
- whatatita 6y ago
  > this kind of thing should be decided upon with public debate [...], where [...] processors are compelled to accept [...] currencies if [they become] legal tender. Isn't that exactly how it works right now? The "public" don't get to decide directly because that's what governments are for, but if a currency becomes lagal tender, people do have to accept it. > A private company gets to decide how and when we can spend our money. No more so than before. Now you can also spend crypto when buying through PayPal. You can still spend crypto elsewhere and you can spend fiat with PayPal and elsewhere.
sushicalculus 6y ago
Will PayPal need to provide the IRS tax forms as if you had sold/exchanged commodities/currencies?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seibelj 6y ago
HN bitcoin haters must be running out of arguments. Shouldn’t Bitcoin be zero by now? Or is the entire world wrong and you are right?
- rantwasp 6y ago
  bitcoin is truly going mainstream. first pornhub started accepting bitcoin, now paypal? it’s here to stay
- parliament32 6y ago
  I was excited to see the amount of salt in the comments when I saw the title. HN is definitely very skeptical of crypto, which is odd for a tech community.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    I can't help but click into Bitcoin-related submissions for the same reason. I always assume the militant cynicism is from techies pissed they missed out on ez wealth or something. It doesn't seem to be skepticism to me because, well, Bitcoin works today. It's a shame. The concept of digital cash is such a cool concept, it would be nice to discuss it without every convo mired in the same boring non sequiturs.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
redm 6y ago
If anyone is interested in the actual press release from Paypal: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-New-Service-Enabling-Users-to-Buy-Hold-and-Sell-Cryptocurrency https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-...
- red_trumpet 6y ago
  Thanks, that title is gold: > PayPal Launches New Service Enabling Users to Buy, Hold and Sell CryptocurrencyPayPal CryptocurrencyPayPal Cryptocurrency 2PayPal Cryptocurrency 3
  - mlindner 6y ago
    It's also a lie, because you can't transfer cryptocurrency into PayPal or out of PayPal. So you're not actually buying any cryptocurrency.
    - fierarul 6y ago
      It's not a lie. They presumably allow you to spend fiat for crypto into their account, hold it there then sell it for fiat. By enumerating all the things you are tricked into assuming you might also transfer out the coins. But no, looks like a lawyer wrote that title and they provide what they say right there.
Uptrenda 6y ago
For me this is bitter-sweet as I've watched Paypal for years try kill any blockchain startup that had anything to do with using their shitty payment processor. "Absolutely NO cryptocurrencies! Unless of course it's us monopolizing it! Then it's okay!" Facebook pulled the same shit banning crypto ads and then shilling their crapcoin. Samsung did it by stalling anyone working on blockchain tech designed to run on their devices until they could offer their own solution. Google is doing the same with search ads until it can shill their centralized cloud solutions as a scalability option and whatever other evil shit they have in the pipeline. These companies are the anti-thesis to the blockchain. Paypal's crappiness is probably a leading reason 'Satoshi' invented Bitcoin.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  Well said. But I don’t understand: > until Google can shill their centralized cloud solutions as a scalability option and whatever other evil shit they have in the pipeline How does this relate to search ads?
- vbo 6y ago
  While I agree big tech is the antithesis of the blockchain "spirit", I doubt they chose to block would-be competitors in anticipation of their own offering. The feeling I get is that everyone is/was tiptoeing around the whole matter due to compliance worries, until there was enough regulatory confidence to make a move. There's also the matter of how exactly Paypal is going to deal in crypto: the Revolut (and others?) model where you own only whatever crypto you buy on their platform, or the real deal where you can also deposit/withdraw cryptocurrencies. Either way, it's a step that highlights regulatory progress being made. It may not be the blockchain spirit, but alas that may not be what ultimately prevails.
- knowuh 6y ago
  Upvoting because of spicy sailor talk.
- kebman 6y ago
  It's bad when your bank prevents you from doing business because of conflict of interest.
hjorthjort 6y ago
PayPal and similar services already salt their "guaranteed exchange rates" quite a lot, so it will be interesting to see how much they tack on for these very volatile assets. Also, wen stablecoins?
fedache 6y ago
#lekkimassacre, we are dying. https://twitter.com/OsAsthaEdoBoy/status/1318893637724524549 https://twitter.com/OsAsthaEdoBoy/status/1318893637724524549
olodolo 6y ago
I’ll take this opportunity to plug a (now profitable!) side project of mine: https://olodolo.com https://olodolo.com allows making AliExpress purchases using crypto. Since AliExpress doesn’t support PayPal this won’t immediately kill me, but the writing might be on the wall.
- hakeberio 6y ago
  Seems useful! Curious about your business model- it seems like your payment processor takes 0.5%/payment; do you charge some percentage on top of that? If so, how much? Adding a "what is our business model" section in the about/faq page would make things more transparent. On the operations side of things, I assume your site acts as an intermediary, drop-shipping the item?
  - olodolo 6y ago
    Yeah I charge an additional 10-15%, which you can see once you select an item to purchase. And yeah after that I act just just like a dropshipper.
aminicam 6y ago
Lots of upside for them to allow crypto
ptbello 6y ago
Paypal's crappiness was definitely the leading reason for Stripe. I wonder what is Strope's stance towards blockchain? Will they now also move into blockchain like PayPal, but properly?
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  PayPal is not giving merchants crypto... just fiat currencies. So this is a half-assed implementation. Let’s hope stripe does it right (crypto from the buyer and crypto to the seller)
  - secfirstmd 6y ago
    Didn't Stripe used to have Bitcoin and then stop supporting it? https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support
    - wavefunction 6y ago
      Bitcoin is not a great option for payments due to the time it takes for a transaction to process/settle and the fees involved.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Also the irreversibility is a huge liability as scammers can just run for the hills and you’re left holding the bag.
  - whatatita 6y ago
    Half-arsed but entierly on-brand for them; their merchants don't want to accept bitcoin, they want their preferred fiat currency. Same goes for buying in EUR and the merchant receiving USD. Buyers get to use their preferred currency (now inc. crypto) and merchants receive theirs.
    - OJFord 6y ago
therealmarv 6y ago
PayPal blocked senders and receivers PayPal account in the past if subject was "bitcoin". For me this was an attack vector. Cannot imagine something really changed in this regard...
- ejanus 6y ago
  They are smelling Billions.
- javert 6y ago
  First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. PayPal doesn't want to get left in the dust. Square offers crypto, so even if the chance crypto really takes off for payments is small, they have a strategic disadvantage/weakness, which has now been rectified.
  - ilaksh 6y ago
    This is not PayPal giving in. This is PayPal's most significant defense effort against cryptocurrencies. The basic concept of cryptocurrency is that you don't need PayPal or any company to be involved in digital money exchange. By deciding that they are going to "support" crypto what they are doing is saying "you don't need to go use real crypto. Just buy it from us and we will handle it for you.". Which means instead of the transaction going through on the real blockchain, it goes through PayPal still. Paypal stays in the loop and gets their transaction fee. People don't own cryptocurrencies. What we want is for Ethereum 2 and or Polkadot or whatever that is now starting to get better scaling ability to really take off and start clearing a ton of transactions per second. It's amazing to me that people cannot see that PayPal and other banks or transaction middlemen have a fundamental conflict of interest with cryptocurrencies which aim to make them obsolete.
    - javert 6y ago
      If you don't mind me asking, what's the situation with Ethereum 2 and Polkadot in terms of maximum supply? (i.e. if bitcoin is 21M max, what about these other two? I'm pretty sure they don't have a cap, but what's the inflation schedule/regime?) Personally I view the supply cap as the killer feature for bitcoin, which is why I'm asking.
ashconnor 6y ago
Let's be realistic here. Buying and selling crypto via Credit Cards or Paypal is a magnet for fraud.
- xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
  Can shorten that down for you: Crypto is a magnet for fraud
  - RIMR 6y ago
    I've bought and sold maybe $750,000 crypto in my life (and profited!), and while holding coin I've never been able to find a legitimate use for it that didn't seem like a novelty (Shop at [existing store], but with Bitcoin!). Pretty much all of the actual uses for cryptocurrency involve some sort of crime (drugs/warez/fraud/child porn). We've had Bitcoin for 11 years now, and nothing meaningful has changed. It wasn't revolutionary - all it did was introduce the anonymity of cash to the Internet.
    - jnwatson 6y ago
      Except without the anonymity.
      - tharne 6y ago
        There are plenty of other crypto currencies that do provide anonymity, that were built on the shoulders of bitcoin, e.g. Monero, ZCash, etc.
    - sk5t 6y ago
      I think it depends on personal circumstances. Residents of Venezuela, South Africa, Zimbabwe probably found crypto an incredibly vital way to stash their holdings in one currency and redeem in another, contrary to a perverse government's wishes--similar to converting cash to a small bag of diamonds and then fleeing. If your nation already uses a global reserve currency then the uses are not so compelling.
cblconfederate 6y ago
It is ironic that cryptocurrencies are becoming a vehicle for more centralization instead of decentralization. Having banks as middlemen between transactions introduced inefficiencies that actually act as a level of opacity that prevents total and absolute control of the transaction ledger. State-regulated cryptocurrencies facilitate all kinds of large-scale economic control, from money printing to sanctions, ostracization etc on a scale that that even systems like SWIFT cannot. Call me when paypal sells gold, in physical form that you get to keep in your property. Make no mistake that paypal will ban any crypto that cant' be 100% subject to the whims of governments. These centralized "mainstream" cryptocurrencies are going to kill the anarchic ecosystem and consequently outlaw it. The playbook "save the children/our enemies" is such a popular routine nowadays that i wonder why there's not a startup for it.
- Accujack 6y ago
  It's never been a goal of incumbent financial institutions to prevent cryptocurrency from becoming dominant... they just want to slow down its adoption and use until they're prepared to co-opt it, just like power companies are doing with grid tied solar panels.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    It's becoming a pattern now Internet -> Centralizing AI -> Centralizing Blockchain -> Centralizing Is Technology cursed to give us 1984?
    - wadkar 6y ago
      Technology isn't doing the centralization, it's the people who are building and managing systems centralizing them. In that sense, we're doomed to give ourselves 1984 unless we consciously and continuously fight everyday to not slip into a dystopia.
      - whimsicalism 6y ago
        I think that the economies of scale enabled by tech lead to centralization.
jmpman 6y ago
Let’s say that instead of PayPal, there’s another money transfer firm, and they let you move money from one person to another, but for each hour you let them keep the money, you’re entered into a random drawing in which your money can go up or down. The recipient can, at any point, press a button and withdrawal the money. Seems to fulfill the gambling needs of the bitcoin community, while providing the same traceability.
- thebean11 6y ago
  The bitcoin price isn't in any way random
  - rullelito 6y ago
    You must be very wealthy.
    - thebean11 6y ago
      heh, I'm certainly not claiming I can influence or predict it, but that doesn't make it random.
  - snazz 6y ago
    It's also volatile and not easily predictable.
- parliament32 6y ago
  Same could be said for your fiat bank account. All depends on your point of reference.
jitendrac 6y ago
No offense. But what about all the fund of innocent people whose accounts got banned because of transactions with coin-exchanges.
jakupovic 6y ago
This is a great play by PayPal to get everyone's BTC. If they act as a traditional bank and allow one to get BTC in, but only pay $currency out, they may do well for themselves if the above is their play.
entropicdrifter 6y ago
At this point I'm just wondering why PayPal isn't regulated as a bank. Functionally they're a bank, but on paper they're still a tech company.
- AviationAtom 6y ago
  Get your money transmitter designation and Uncle Sam leaves you alone
- coolspot 6y ago
  What part of bank regulations you think PayPal is not compliant with? They are registered money transfer business. When they give out loans they use Synchrony bank for that.
  - entropicdrifter 6y ago
    If they close your account, which they can do at any time for any reason, they do not have to refund you your balance. They're not a bank but they can functionally act like one if you don't transfer your balance(s) out of your account(s).
rudiger 6y ago
Bitcoin breaking through $12,300 USD is an extremely bullish indicator: a perfect 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the Dec 2017 all-time high.
- atleta 6y ago
  Also, Venus conjuncts Mars in the first house.
  - TheMagicHorsey 6y ago
    Perfect reply.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- wcoenen 6y ago
  Bitcoin also broke through $12,300 in July 2019 and it went down from there...
bluetwo 6y ago
Do I read it correctly that it won't pay out crypto, but will only accept it? Does this mean they will amass a large amount of coin to speculate with in the market as they see fit?
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  Well, no, since they have to pay for the payouts somehow, they will need to be exchanging those crypto balances for fiat somehow.
ratonroy 6y ago
Nice
benlivengood 6y ago
> Cryptocurrency payments on PayPal will be settled using fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, meaning merchants will not receive payments in virtual coins, the company said. This is worse than any of the existing exchanges. It's the robin hood of holding cryptocurrency.
ratonroy 6y ago
Llol
ratonroy 6y ago
GCA10 1 day ago [–] I like Graham's points about overconfidence, peer groups and (judicious amounts of) ignorance, all of which he champions quite strongly. But drilling deeper on "rate of change" is an undervalued element that deserves a closer look. The best innovators are really good at taking Version 1.0 and figuring out what rework will turn it into a better 2.0, and then 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, etc. This is an identifiable skill! It can be cultivated. Once you've got it, the failings of Version 1.0 do not ruin your self-esteem. You just get to work on fixing them. And not enough people think about this systematically. One of my favorite museum stops of all time was the British Library, where a glass case held Paul McCartney's first draft of "Yesterday." You could see, cross-out by cross-out, how a somewhat awkward ballad got turned into a pop classic.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Can you buy cryptocurrency on PayPal and transfer it to an external wallet?
- aww_dang 6y ago
  No. >Can I transfer crypto into and out of PayPal? Currently you can only hold the cryptocurrencies that you buy on PayPal in your account. Additionally, the crypto in your account cannot be transfered to other accounts on or off PayPal https://twitter.com/Cz4182925/status/1318912301488025602/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Cz4182925/status/1318912301488025602/pho...
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    Wut? So what are you buying?
    - bondarchuk 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_(stock_market) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_(stock_market)
      - megous 6y ago
        It says this was banned, but how's that much different from CFDs, lol.
excalibur 6y ago
I'd really like to see fewer people trying to normalize proof-of-work crypto like bitcoin. This stuff isn't remotely sustainable.
- AviationAtom 6y ago
  It should be interesting to see an ecosystem pop up around something that isn't really even sustainable now I also wonder how the China factor will play into the future of it: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/#:~:text=Pool%20Concentration%20in%20China https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/#:~:text=Po...
- throw51319 6y ago
  Yeah lol. Seems like a ridiculous use of power. And as the number of transactions grow, the use increases right?
  - phocion 6y ago
    Securing the integrity of a monetary network that coordinates economic activity at a global level is not a "ridiculous use of power". Christmas lights are a ridiculous use of power
    - throw51319 6y ago
      Yeah but we already coordinate economic activity with big banks and everything, Paypal etc. But the energy cost per transaction is way way less, right?
      - phocion 6y ago
        If you only look at the energy cost of running the servers where the banks store their databases, sure. But what about the energy cost of powering air-conditioned and brightly lit office buildings all around the world, thousands of branches and ATMs, security systems such as secure vaults and armored trucks, and the millions of employees commuting every day (or in 2020, Zooming into meetings all day)? It adds up real quick. The difference is that the Bitcoin network is completely transparent and auditable, and we can accurately estimate the total energy used to secure it; whereas the banking network is opaque and we can only guesstimate how much energy they really consume
nonamenoslogan 6y ago
Awesome, a reason for me to leave PayPal completely.
lgats 6y ago
https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-New-Service-Enabling-Users-to-Buy-Hold-and-Sell-Cryptocurrency https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-... initially featuring Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, directly within the PayPal digital wallet
throw51319 6y ago
I still don't see the point of Bitcoin beyond being a digital gold. And monero for anonymous purchases online. Every country is still gonna have their currencies, and the most stable country is going to be used as the peg currency. Right now that's USD. So basically Bitcoin is a digital gold, but the underlying trust mechanism is inefficient. Thus it gets centralized at big nodes, like banks or exchanges. Thus it becomes basically a digital gold. You might as well have banks offer "Digital Gold, $1000 an ounce!"
- ColanR 6y ago
  Wasn't that how it was designed? Even the term 'miner' was based on gold mining. I think the only difference is that gold used to be the currency itself, not just what backed the currency, and BTC tried to be both.
- phocion 6y ago
  How is the underlying trust mechanism inefficient? You can run a fully validating Bitcoin node on an old laptop without any issues. Even a raspberry pi can handle it.
  - throw51319 6y ago
    Yeah but isn't it like, as the number of transactions increase the computing power must increase? So if you had the world transacting on the blockchain ledger, it would take a crazy amount of computing power just to validate?
    - xur17 6y ago
      No, that's not how it works.
      - throw51319 6y ago
        So why do they have farms in china for bitcoin mining?
    - 6y ago
afrojack123 6y ago
I understand the game plan. US financial institutions will accept bitcoin into its system but only pay merchants in USD. Bitcoin in, USD out. The bitcoin won't be let out because it is digital gold. Go long bitcoin. The federal government and its henchmen (banks, financial institutions) are acquiring bitcoin.
pedro-guimaraes 6y ago
So crypto is going mainstream...
iphorde 6y ago
What will be most interesting will be the commission fee they charge. If they're competitive, then this might become my new go to. Paypal is usually expensive on their transactions normally.
artaak 6y ago
I've got the invite to paypal's beta program for crypto. Honestly, you've got to be mad to be dealing with paypal. I've read anecdotes from people, losing access to their accounts, locked up money in paypal, etc... It all seemed to be just stories, seemed rare, circumstances unclear. Until one day this summer, out of the blue, paypal demanded ID of my spouse (for her account), and then after reviewing it, "permanently limited" the account, gloriously exclaiming:" Aha, we got your information, now you won't be able to use your current account nor open a new one!" Trying to get to the customer support is yet another saga, and I will spare your time, but the net result is nil. Nobody in the support knows why the ban happened (there was no real reason to ban a paypal customer with over 8+ years, buying some random stuff on ebay), nobody can revert it, nobody really cares and there are no appeals. Receiving a note from paypal today regarding crypto looked like a bad, really dumb joke to me and an insult for my spouse. You gotta be completely clueless or insane to trust this shitty company with your crypto. One of the key points for crypto is the lack of "deplatforming", which the sinister paypal does left and right, at the same time not even being able to explain its actions, nor comprehend consequences. Paypal - never!
- dannyw 6y ago
  May I offer another tale: • PayPal account holder for 14 years. • Occasionally sell on eBay, and send/receive payments for freelancing work (maybe $10k a year) • Semi-regularly buy and sell bitcoin for PayPal (about $1-2k a month) • Never had eBay buyers claim DOA or anything suspicious, including high value sales (think GPUs, etc). • As of a year ago, added to the “Funds Now” program which means my money will never be placed on hold, even during a dispute. • The program worked as intended, as I was able to access my funds even during a dispute. • For disputes I’ve had to make, they’ve always been resolved in my favour. • Back when they had phone support pre-COVID, I always got local reps who knew what they’re doing. On the other hand, last month my bank banned me and closed my accounts for depositing money into a local, regulated bitcoin exchange; with a letter giving me one day to sort out alternate banking agreements. Go figure.
  - artaak 6y ago
    Look, believe it or not, I am in the same boat - never had issues with paypal, but neither I'm a heavy user. Randomness and the severity of paypal actions is a huge issue for me. The subject of the discussion is paypal's surprise wedding with crypto. As stated in the above comment, my argument is: from customer perspective it is a bad, crazy proposition. Hey, paypal has a loooong history of random, inexplicable deplatforming of customers, and mixing that corporate attribute with crypto makes sense only on executive powerpoint slides.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
Is Paypal still working? It used to be the payment mechanism everyone had to use (not with pleasure) and people even transacted using it for P2P transfer. I haven't really seen it in a while, someone asked me on marketplace if I could receive payment with it (instead of the typical venmo) and I just assumed it was a scam.
- spoopyskelly 6y ago
  Is <multi billion dollar company> still working? Yeah. They also own Venmo.
- doublepg23 6y ago
  I use it all the time for r/hardwareswap on Reddit.
ur-whale 6y ago
Two huge problems with this, one a consequence from the other: - you don't own the keys and therefore don't actually own the crypto, just a vague IOU from payapl - paypal can therefore credit you for as much crypto as you'd like (in exchange for your fiat) without actually owning/controlling *any* crypto at all, since there is no way for a user to ask for a crypto-hard proof that the coins they own actually exist. At the risk of sounding repetitive: not you keys, not your Bitcoins.
tsjq 6y ago
Palantir wants to see your crypto currency transactions too.
phreack 6y ago
Only available for U.S. account holders, that's a big detail.
MrMan 6y ago
My sole objection to bitcoin is also a really big one - energy use and its impact on climate. For that reason alone, it should be a nonstarter, it is really sad to see it flourishing when we already have a variety of types of money. A government could make a crypto currency without the hashing part, and save us a lot of energy. I don’t care about the libertarian part of this, because we cannot escape the need to create and enforce rules and work together, so we will always need government.
hackersHack 6y ago
This autta go over Well
AngryData 6y ago
Its all fun and games until paypal freezes your account for "suspicious activity" then keeps the cryptocoins for themselves when you fail to jump through 20 hoops at their demand.

942 points by epaga 6y ago

This is great for driving adoption of cryptocurrencies! However, the unwanted side effect is also the growth of centralized currencies used as "cash you can track" by governments. And we can be certain PayPal will know exactly where to steer their users...

raesene9 6y ago
unfortunately for most commercial transactions related to cryptocurrency (at scale) decentralization already seems largely dead. When you look at the aftermath of exchange hacks (e.g. the recent kucoin hack), and see how quickly funds are frozen by various other exchanges, you can see the direction of travel, especially when combined with the uptick of regulatory interest (e.g. BitMex) Edit: As this is attracting some downvotes, how about some citations. On Kucoin From(https://www.coindesk.com/kucoin-crypto-hack-laundering https://www.coindesk.com/kucoin-crypto-hack-laundering) "The hackers have largely failed to sell those tokens on closely guarded centralized exchanges which quickly flag and often block hacked funds." On BitMex from(https://www.coindesk.com/bitmex-accelerates-identity-verification-kyc https://www.coindesk.com/bitmex-accelerates-identity-verific...) "BitMEX Accelerates Mandatory ID Verification After Charges of Lax Anti-Money Laundering Controls"
- Sebb767 6y ago
  > and see how quickly funds are frozen by various other exchanges As long as this is a community decision, I don't see a problem. Centralization would need a central authority to decide which coins to freeze.
  - raesene9 6y ago
    It's not a community decision, it's a decision by private corporations (binance, coinbase et al) often driven by government regulation (e.g. KYC)
  - gruez 6y ago
    So if I accept bitcoin as payments, do I have to keep to up to date with all the blacklists that are out there? Otherwise I might end up accepting coins that are "blacklisted" and are worthless. Who is the authoritative source for these blacklists? Are merchants forced to subscribe to every blacklist out there, in fear that even some chance of accepting blacklisted coins is too much? We kind of see this in action in the fiat world, with payment providers freezing accounts that sent transactions with certain keywords.
- ckastner 6y ago
  > As this is attracting some downvotes, how about some citations Crypto is one of the few topics on HN that has an extremely aggressive following. The followers may not be that numerous, but they'll downvote (and fast, too) on an emotional basis, rather than a rational one, and will thus even downvote simple facts when they displease them. (not referring to my own posts on crypto, which are at least somewhat opiniated.)
  - ejanus 6y ago
    I believe that some of the people here are also holders of cryptocurrencies.
  - ulzeraj 6y ago
    So just like socialism. The other day I've politely questioned how price discovery would be possible on socialist economies and got downvoted to oblivion without a single argument. Yeah I'm expecting downvotes for this one also...
    - justaguyhere 6y ago
      I've also seen downvotes if I ever criticize landlords on HN, even when they are valid criticisms.
      - datameta 6y ago
        Not to disparage your point or the parent comment's but I think part of that is that HN operates to a much lesser degree like an echo chamber (as the majority of social network are wont to steer toward) so it might come as more of a surprise when someone disagrees. Of course I feel I should highlight the obvious fact that discourse is far more valuable than trying to quietly silence a differing opinion...
    - smolder 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987760 I don't know that this was politely questioned. I do think your tone had a factor in the downvotes.
- hjorthjort 6y ago
  There are always decentralized exchanges. I think eventually people will get used to the UX of handling their own keys and prefer it over keeping their coins in exchanges. Either that, or banks will start doing crypto custody and government will guarantee the assets. But I think that's less likely, I don't see banks inviting the risk of managing crypto keys.
  - raesene9 6y ago
    There are decentralized exchanges, the question is whether they'll see large scale adoption, particularly from less technical astute users. Also to be successful for the general public, they'll need fiat on and off ramps (at least in the short-->medium term). At the moment most of those go via the centralized exchanges...
    - hjorthjort 6y ago
      Sure, but all it takes is centralized one on-ramp that will take you, then you can transfer out of it. That's a big difference from having your funds in a particular exchange, where it may be seized. I agree with the UX problem. I think the decentralized exchanges will manage to scale, research is ongoing. And the UX of decentralized exchanges is not much worse than/different from using Coinbase or Kraken, for example. The big UX challenge is self-custody of keys.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      I'm hardly a crypto stan but it feels somewhat odd to see so many naysayers on decentralized exchanges right as they are picking up huge amounts of steam. KYC will be dead as soon as there is a liquid decentralized atomic swap for monero
      - Sargos 6y ago
        The Aztec L2 for Ethereum uses zkSNARKS for privacy and allows for execution which means a decentralized exchange can be made in a fully private environment. It just released but it's a very exciting protocol for those who like Monero.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Am I correct in that the definition of "freezing" here is private company refuses to do business with marked cash? And that a private company who is hacked (and was previously the custodian of a customer's tokens) makes it more difficult to retrieve same through its machinery? Per your link, "Still, by Monday, Elliptic said that hackers had already flipped millions of stolen tokens for $7.5 million in ethereum (ETH) on decentralized exchanges (DEX) Kyber Network and Uniswap." So the "problem" is that companies are making decisions for themselves (admittedly, approaching the way Google and Apple can make decisions "for themselves"), and that people who were given control of assets are controlling them. Decentralization seems fine from a protocol perspective, these are just effects of human behavior.
  - mihaifm 6y ago
    > Am I correct in that the definition of "freezing" here is private company refuses to do business with marked cash? Yea that's correct. They track the coins as they flow from one address to another. It can be increasingly difficult once the funds are divided, but entirely possible with automation. It's worth noting that this is not possible with some privacy focused cryptocurrencies like Monero.
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    It is like saying: "I robbed a bank ang got away with $1m, all in $20 bills. The bank has the numbers of the bills I stole. I can no longer use these notes as they will be flagged/raise an alarm if I try to deposit them in another bank." Absolutely plausible scenario. If one stole $1m from a bank, the value of those bill are no longer $1m. But if that someone can use mules, distribute the money across the city (assuming a big city), ask the mules to spend this on the same day, in various locations, then the value of that $1m will drop to $500k. The reason: mules need a cut, mediators need a cut, value of items purchased, etc. In that sense, I expect that those "decentralized exchanges" should have large fees, large spreads, etc, practically mimicking the cost of running a 'mules' network.
  - lawn 6y ago
    This is exactly the problem that Monero tries to solve. There you cannot trace transactions or "taint" them, so you don't have to worry that a drug dealer might pay you and you'll get your account locked.
- rossjudson 6y ago
  Cryptocurrencies are used when you want to hide, or speculatively profit from crime without doing crime. Large scale legitimate transactions don't need to hide, and actively don't want to (the books must balance).
gwbas1c 6y ago
> "cash you can track" Uhm, the blockchain is a ledger of all transactions. It's "cash you can track", and pseudoanonymous at best.
- exdsq 6y ago
  Not really... you can use mixers to obfuscate non-anonymous coins and there are privacy specific coins which allow for anonymous transactions
  - emptysongglass 6y ago
    People: commenter is correct. It's absurdly easy to anonymize txns on a blockchain, especially if you leverage cross-chains like Incognito.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    I mean, if you’re willing to risk big fines for money laundering... https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-financial-watchdog-fines-early-bitcoin-mixer-60m-for-money-laundering/amp https://cointelegraph.com/news/us-financial-watchdog-fines-e...
    - vmchale 6y ago
      That's the person running the tumbler, no? I think there were criminal charges too.
    - SilasX 6y ago
      From an informed comment on the recent discussion of that, the fine was from doing that while being a money transmitter i.e. also dealing in fiat currencies, not for the crypo mixer per se. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24829562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24829562
      - andreareina 6y ago
        I read that comment as saying it doesn't require touching fiat. Bitcoin is a currency, so doing any sort of store-and-forward of it makes you a money transmitter. > For traditional Bitcoin mixers as in this case, someone receives money from users and then transmits money to many users. This is money transmission and requires registration with FinCEN and sometimes requires registration with states (though some states have exemptions for completely crypto to crypto transmission that doesn't touch USD or other fiat). Some states having exceptions for pure crypto transmission implies that most states don't.
mihaifm 6y ago
"not your keys not your coin" has been advocated for years on any discussion board, unfortunately it's falling on death ears. Typical users just like the convenience of centralized exchanges and "attractive" offers like this one.
- triclops200 6y ago
  While "death ears" sounds like a great metal band name, the correct expression is "deaf ears" :)
- javert 6y ago
  I think it's OK to use centralized services for small amounts of cryptocurrency, just like you would put a small amount of cash in your wallet. For large amounts, use cold wallets. Not your keys, not your coin.
  - qertoip 6y ago
    Privacy is a big reason to not use custodians even for small amounts.
    - javert 6y ago
      I don't view privacy as attainable with cryptocurrency anyway.
      - ric2b 6y ago
        It is with Monero.
- vmception 6y ago
  Oh it’s not, the people that take that most to heart just start running exchanges and services because they get a lot of coin and big keys
slickrick216 6y ago
All in chainlink
arminiusreturns 6y ago
In my almost a bitcoin millionare story, I abandoned bitcoin in the early days (cpu days!) because I saw this as the real issue at hand. It jaded me from the market and I haven't really got into it since, but monero and zcash seem to be the two that have the best privacy features. I think ethereum has been working on this more also.
tgv 6y ago
Yeah, crime just started paying better.
SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
> This is great for driving adoption of cryptocurrencies! I don't follow cryptocurrency evolution on a regular basis -- in fact it's grown far beyond what I understood when I was BTC mining for fun a decade ago! I did some googling and see literally hundreds of them now. Is the goal CC enthusiasts to see a world with one main CC or a fragmented world of many, all exchanging at different rates?

raesene9 6y ago

This should be interesting. I'll be particularly interested in seeing how Paypal handles KYC for the cryptocurrencies it buys and how it manages pricing variations, where they're paying merchants in Fiat. Also all the people at Tether can plan to print themselves some new coins --> BTC and then go on a shopping spree :P (for the humour impaired, this bit is a joke)

xorcist 6y ago
It is not certain they will do anything that makes price variations a concern. Now they'll simply allow their customers to buy and sell. On the KYC front, actors like Paypal (and Square, Braintree and so on) are in a very good position, as they are already payment processors and fully compliant with those regulations. That is something smaller upstarts struggle with, not the established ones. It can even benefit them as a moat.
- raesene9 6y ago
  If I read the article correctly it said that Paypal would take payement in cryptocurrencies and then pay the merchants with fiat. That means they will need to hedge the risk of a change in exchange rate between buying and settlement (for example paypal offers to settle payment 14 days after payment as a service). Now they can do that, but it'll take some effort. On KYC I'd agree they're in a better position, but it seems like they'll still need to beef up their processes, as regulators are quite interested in proving where cryptocurrencies came from. They'll not want to be caught with a load of coins that came from the latest ransomware incident.
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    >but it seems like they'll still need to beef up their processes, as regulators are quite interested in proving where cryptocurrencies came from. Perhaps PayPal will only allow people to pay with cryptocurrency they have bought from PayPal in the first instance. So there wouldn't be any incoming our outgoing movements of cryptocurrency at all.
6y ago

jahn716 6y ago

Potentially great news for adoption Potentially good news for HODLers Potentially bad news for decentralization

actuator 6y ago
After the 2017-18 craze, I don't know if HODLers have gained anything on stock market. It has almost followed the broad stock market movement these days. Look at the covid crash in March, coins like BTC also dipped and peformed worse than indexes like Nasdaq while traditional currency hedge gold rose in value when both of them were crashing.
- geogra4 6y ago
  yeah from what I can tell BTC is more correlated with tech stocks than anything
  - xorcist 6y ago
    The covid crash was a liquidity crisis. Gold crashed hard, too. The correlation is just that they're not USD.
    - actuator 6y ago
      Gold dipped slightly and rose fast, nothing compared to what happened to say BTC or the big indices. Gold dipped by 10% from its peak when lowest, BTC by 50%
      - raziel2701 6y ago
        If I had bought gold and btc at their covid lowest I'd be up 30% with gold, and up 160% with btc. That's some serious performance. Some stocks went up like crazy though, for comparison: TSLA is up 470% ZM up 400% NVDA up 200% S&P 500 (SPY) up 58% Nasdaq (QQQ) up 70% SHOP up 230 %

vienarr 6y ago

“We are working with central banks and thinking of all forms of digital currencies and how PayPal can play a role,” does that mean a 'centralized' entity will try to facilitate payment based on 'decentralized' currency wow

kuroguro 6y ago

I wonder if they'll allow restoring accounts that were banned for crypto trading. They were pretty hard against it in the beginning IIRC.

xiphias2 6y ago
That is decentralized crypto trading: send money in PayPal to a person, and he promises to give you Bitcoin in exchange. In that case there's no way for PayPal to know if sending Bitcoin took place or not. If Paypal verifies both transactions (Bitcoin and fiat), this problem goes away, and all KYC laws are followed.

jatsign 6y ago

Curious that Bitcoin topped $12k for the first time in a long while yesterday. Makes me wonder who knew in advance. Being in cryptocurrencies has made me cynical.

simias 6y ago
I don't even try to make sense of bitcoin trends anymore. You might as well try to interpret shapes is clouds. Bitcoin has been in an upward trend since early September for no discernible reason (to me at least).
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Just like all the other assets these days
- dontcarethrow2 6y ago
  Was hanging at 10-11 and shot up (eh) after Square invested 1% (50m) of their assets. Has been a steady rise (dont know trade terms 'scuse me), I:m assuming it might stay or jump a few more k. Disclaimer: I don't trade.
- acesubido 6y ago
  > Bitcoin has been in an upward trend since early September for no discernible reason (to me at least). I think it's mainly due to purchases from institutions that believe that Bitcoin is a safe haven asset during the lockdowns. The spiel is: it's protection from currency debasement due to Central Banks everywhere printing out at low interest rates for the pandemic. - Square spread 50MUSD worth buys @ 10K USD early October [1] - Microstrategy spread 425M buys from 9-10K USD around August - September [2] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/08/square-buys-50-million-in-bitcoin-says-cryptocurrency-aligns-with-companys-purpose.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/08/square-buys-50-million-in-bi... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherbrookins/2020/08/14/microstrategy-just-sent-green-light-to-corporate-america-on-bitcoin/#1e6b9f836bc4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherbrookins/2020/08/14/...
  - 6y ago

iDemonix 6y ago

They could be giving it out for free, to be honest, I still wouldn't ever go back to using their services.

xwdv 6y ago
Why are you taking it so personal, it's just business. Let it go.
- OJFord 6y ago
  I don't believe GP is taking it personally, can one not have a poor business relationship and be put of dealing with the other party again?
- axaxs 6y ago
  I don't see hatred of PayPal as personal, their service is awful. Randomly charging your bank account instead of credit card. Holding money for 3 weeks for no apparent reason. Most amusingly, I had some small amount of foreign currency in my account somehow I couldn't get rid of. It was too little to convert to USD according to their system. In the end I had to delete my account and agree to forfeit all my fractions of a dollar of money. Their service is objectively terrible.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I've gotta say, I wouldn't have expected them to allow cryptocurrency before allowing guns and obscenity.

aww_dang 6y ago

The wording wasn't clear. They claim they will allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, but will they allow them to send these currencies out of their network? >Cryptocurrency payments on PayPal will be settled using fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, meaning merchants will not receive payments in virtual coins, the company said Will users be able to take coins out of PayPal and send them to merchants, or will this be another walled garden? If PayPal's policies and fees weren't so difficult, many merchants wouldn't be into cryptocurrencies in the first place.

afrojack123 6y ago
Its a walled garden. Cryptocurrency is federal, nation level politics. Many people have been beaten up over currency. It is a massive power to be able to force the the rest of the world to use your money for international trade and only you have the right to print that money.
- aww_dang 6y ago
  Talk of the "post dollar world" and the "cashless society" has been going on for more than a decade. There was a time when if you said people would wear tracking chips you'd be labeled a kook. Today people willingly carry smart phones connected to social networks. The disruption is similar in both cases. The result is predictable. The goals have already been stated at Davos.

crispyporkbites 6y ago

Nice! A private company gets to decide how and when we can spend our money. Thanks PayPal. In all seriousness this kind of thing should be decided upon with public debate and discourse, where pseudo banks and payment processors are compelled to accept crypto currencies if the law and the people deem them as legal tender.

pjc50 6y ago
> deem them as legal tender. That's .. not going to happen, unless one of the "central bank cryptocurrencies" goes live.
whatatita 6y ago
> this kind of thing should be decided upon with public debate [...], where [...] processors are compelled to accept [...] currencies if [they become] legal tender. Isn't that exactly how it works right now? The "public" don't get to decide directly because that's what governments are for, but if a currency becomes lagal tender, people do have to accept it. > A private company gets to decide how and when we can spend our money. No more so than before. Now you can also spend crypto when buying through PayPal. You can still spend crypto elsewhere and you can spend fiat with PayPal and elsewhere.

sushicalculus 6y ago

Will PayPal need to provide the IRS tax forms as if you had sold/exchanged commodities/currencies?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seibelj 6y ago

HN bitcoin haters must be running out of arguments. Shouldn’t Bitcoin be zero by now? Or is the entire world wrong and you are right?

rantwasp 6y ago
bitcoin is truly going mainstream. first pornhub started accepting bitcoin, now paypal? it’s here to stay
parliament32 6y ago
I was excited to see the amount of salt in the comments when I saw the title. HN is definitely very skeptical of crypto, which is odd for a tech community.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  I can't help but click into Bitcoin-related submissions for the same reason. I always assume the militant cynicism is from techies pissed they missed out on ez wealth or something. It doesn't seem to be skepticism to me because, well, Bitcoin works today. It's a shame. The concept of digital cash is such a cool concept, it would be nice to discuss it without every convo mired in the same boring non sequiturs.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

redm 6y ago

If anyone is interested in the actual press release from Paypal: https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-New-Service-Enabling-Users-to-Buy-Hold-and-Sell-Cryptocurrency https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-...

red_trumpet 6y ago
Thanks, that title is gold: > PayPal Launches New Service Enabling Users to Buy, Hold and Sell CryptocurrencyPayPal CryptocurrencyPayPal Cryptocurrency 2PayPal Cryptocurrency 3
- mlindner 6y ago
  It's also a lie, because you can't transfer cryptocurrency into PayPal or out of PayPal. So you're not actually buying any cryptocurrency.
  - fierarul 6y ago
    It's not a lie. They presumably allow you to spend fiat for crypto into their account, hold it there then sell it for fiat. By enumerating all the things you are tricked into assuming you might also transfer out the coins. But no, looks like a lawyer wrote that title and they provide what they say right there.

Uptrenda 6y ago

For me this is bitter-sweet as I've watched Paypal for years try kill any blockchain startup that had anything to do with using their shitty payment processor. "Absolutely NO cryptocurrencies! Unless of course it's us monopolizing it! Then it's okay!" Facebook pulled the same shit banning crypto ads and then shilling their crapcoin. Samsung did it by stalling anyone working on blockchain tech designed to run on their devices until they could offer their own solution. Google is doing the same with search ads until it can shill their centralized cloud solutions as a scalability option and whatever other evil shit they have in the pipeline. These companies are the anti-thesis to the blockchain. Paypal's crappiness is probably a leading reason 'Satoshi' invented Bitcoin.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
Well said. But I don’t understand: > until Google can shill their centralized cloud solutions as a scalability option and whatever other evil shit they have in the pipeline How does this relate to search ads?
vbo 6y ago
While I agree big tech is the antithesis of the blockchain "spirit", I doubt they chose to block would-be competitors in anticipation of their own offering. The feeling I get is that everyone is/was tiptoeing around the whole matter due to compliance worries, until there was enough regulatory confidence to make a move. There's also the matter of how exactly Paypal is going to deal in crypto: the Revolut (and others?) model where you own only whatever crypto you buy on their platform, or the real deal where you can also deposit/withdraw cryptocurrencies. Either way, it's a step that highlights regulatory progress being made. It may not be the blockchain spirit, but alas that may not be what ultimately prevails.
knowuh 6y ago
Upvoting because of spicy sailor talk.
kebman 6y ago
It's bad when your bank prevents you from doing business because of conflict of interest.

hjorthjort 6y ago

PayPal and similar services already salt their "guaranteed exchange rates" quite a lot, so it will be interesting to see how much they tack on for these very volatile assets. Also, wen stablecoins?

fedache 6y ago

#lekkimassacre, we are dying. https://twitter.com/OsAsthaEdoBoy/status/1318893637724524549 https://twitter.com/OsAsthaEdoBoy/status/1318893637724524549

olodolo 6y ago

I’ll take this opportunity to plug a (now profitable!) side project of mine: https://olodolo.com https://olodolo.com allows making AliExpress purchases using crypto. Since AliExpress doesn’t support PayPal this won’t immediately kill me, but the writing might be on the wall.

hakeberio 6y ago
Seems useful! Curious about your business model- it seems like your payment processor takes 0.5%/payment; do you charge some percentage on top of that? If so, how much? Adding a "what is our business model" section in the about/faq page would make things more transparent. On the operations side of things, I assume your site acts as an intermediary, drop-shipping the item?
- olodolo 6y ago
  Yeah I charge an additional 10-15%, which you can see once you select an item to purchase. And yeah after that I act just just like a dropshipper.

aminicam 6y ago

Lots of upside for them to allow crypto

ptbello 6y ago

Paypal's crappiness was definitely the leading reason for Stripe. I wonder what is Strope's stance towards blockchain? Will they now also move into blockchain like PayPal, but properly?

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
PayPal is not giving merchants crypto... just fiat currencies. So this is a half-assed implementation. Let’s hope stripe does it right (crypto from the buyer and crypto to the seller)
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  Didn't Stripe used to have Bitcoin and then stop supporting it? https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support
  - wavefunction 6y ago
    Bitcoin is not a great option for payments due to the time it takes for a transaction to process/settle and the fees involved.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Also the irreversibility is a huge liability as scammers can just run for the hills and you’re left holding the bag.
- whatatita 6y ago
  Half-arsed but entierly on-brand for them; their merchants don't want to accept bitcoin, they want their preferred fiat currency. Same goes for buying in EUR and the merchant receiving USD. Buyers get to use their preferred currency (now inc. crypto) and merchants receive theirs.
  - OJFord 6y ago

therealmarv 6y ago

PayPal blocked senders and receivers PayPal account in the past if subject was "bitcoin". For me this was an attack vector. Cannot imagine something really changed in this regard...

ejanus 6y ago
They are smelling Billions.
javert 6y ago
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. PayPal doesn't want to get left in the dust. Square offers crypto, so even if the chance crypto really takes off for payments is small, they have a strategic disadvantage/weakness, which has now been rectified.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  This is not PayPal giving in. This is PayPal's most significant defense effort against cryptocurrencies. The basic concept of cryptocurrency is that you don't need PayPal or any company to be involved in digital money exchange. By deciding that they are going to "support" crypto what they are doing is saying "you don't need to go use real crypto. Just buy it from us and we will handle it for you.". Which means instead of the transaction going through on the real blockchain, it goes through PayPal still. Paypal stays in the loop and gets their transaction fee. People don't own cryptocurrencies. What we want is for Ethereum 2 and or Polkadot or whatever that is now starting to get better scaling ability to really take off and start clearing a ton of transactions per second. It's amazing to me that people cannot see that PayPal and other banks or transaction middlemen have a fundamental conflict of interest with cryptocurrencies which aim to make them obsolete.
  - javert 6y ago
    If you don't mind me asking, what's the situation with Ethereum 2 and Polkadot in terms of maximum supply? (i.e. if bitcoin is 21M max, what about these other two? I'm pretty sure they don't have a cap, but what's the inflation schedule/regime?) Personally I view the supply cap as the killer feature for bitcoin, which is why I'm asking.

ashconnor 6y ago

Let's be realistic here. Buying and selling crypto via Credit Cards or Paypal is a magnet for fraud.

xyzzy_plugh 6y ago
Can shorten that down for you: Crypto is a magnet for fraud
- RIMR 6y ago
  I've bought and sold maybe $750,000 crypto in my life (and profited!), and while holding coin I've never been able to find a legitimate use for it that didn't seem like a novelty (Shop at [existing store], but with Bitcoin!). Pretty much all of the actual uses for cryptocurrency involve some sort of crime (drugs/warez/fraud/child porn). We've had Bitcoin for 11 years now, and nothing meaningful has changed. It wasn't revolutionary - all it did was introduce the anonymity of cash to the Internet.
  - jnwatson 6y ago
    Except without the anonymity.
    - tharne 6y ago
      There are plenty of other crypto currencies that do provide anonymity, that were built on the shoulders of bitcoin, e.g. Monero, ZCash, etc.
  - sk5t 6y ago
    I think it depends on personal circumstances. Residents of Venezuela, South Africa, Zimbabwe probably found crypto an incredibly vital way to stash their holdings in one currency and redeem in another, contrary to a perverse government's wishes--similar to converting cash to a small bag of diamonds and then fleeing. If your nation already uses a global reserve currency then the uses are not so compelling.

cblconfederate 6y ago

It is ironic that cryptocurrencies are becoming a vehicle for more centralization instead of decentralization. Having banks as middlemen between transactions introduced inefficiencies that actually act as a level of opacity that prevents total and absolute control of the transaction ledger. State-regulated cryptocurrencies facilitate all kinds of large-scale economic control, from money printing to sanctions, ostracization etc on a scale that that even systems like SWIFT cannot. Call me when paypal sells gold, in physical form that you get to keep in your property. Make no mistake that paypal will ban any crypto that cant' be 100% subject to the whims of governments. These centralized "mainstream" cryptocurrencies are going to kill the anarchic ecosystem and consequently outlaw it. The playbook "save the children/our enemies" is such a popular routine nowadays that i wonder why there's not a startup for it.

Accujack 6y ago
It's never been a goal of incumbent financial institutions to prevent cryptocurrency from becoming dominant... they just want to slow down its adoption and use until they're prepared to co-opt it, just like power companies are doing with grid tied solar panels.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  It's becoming a pattern now Internet -> Centralizing AI -> Centralizing Blockchain -> Centralizing Is Technology cursed to give us 1984?
  - wadkar 6y ago
    Technology isn't doing the centralization, it's the people who are building and managing systems centralizing them. In that sense, we're doomed to give ourselves 1984 unless we consciously and continuously fight everyday to not slip into a dystopia.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      I think that the economies of scale enabled by tech lead to centralization.

jmpman 6y ago

Let’s say that instead of PayPal, there’s another money transfer firm, and they let you move money from one person to another, but for each hour you let them keep the money, you’re entered into a random drawing in which your money can go up or down. The recipient can, at any point, press a button and withdrawal the money. Seems to fulfill the gambling needs of the bitcoin community, while providing the same traceability.

thebean11 6y ago
The bitcoin price isn't in any way random
- rullelito 6y ago
  You must be very wealthy.
  - thebean11 6y ago
    heh, I'm certainly not claiming I can influence or predict it, but that doesn't make it random.
- snazz 6y ago
  It's also volatile and not easily predictable.
parliament32 6y ago
Same could be said for your fiat bank account. All depends on your point of reference.

jitendrac 6y ago

No offense. But what about all the fund of innocent people whose accounts got banned because of transactions with coin-exchanges.

jakupovic 6y ago

This is a great play by PayPal to get everyone's BTC. If they act as a traditional bank and allow one to get BTC in, but only pay $currency out, they may do well for themselves if the above is their play.

entropicdrifter 6y ago

At this point I'm just wondering why PayPal isn't regulated as a bank. Functionally they're a bank, but on paper they're still a tech company.

AviationAtom 6y ago
Get your money transmitter designation and Uncle Sam leaves you alone
coolspot 6y ago
What part of bank regulations you think PayPal is not compliant with? They are registered money transfer business. When they give out loans they use Synchrony bank for that.
- entropicdrifter 6y ago
  If they close your account, which they can do at any time for any reason, they do not have to refund you your balance. They're not a bank but they can functionally act like one if you don't transfer your balance(s) out of your account(s).

rudiger 6y ago

Bitcoin breaking through $12,300 USD is an extremely bullish indicator: a perfect 61.8% Fibonacci retracement of the Dec 2017 all-time high.

atleta 6y ago
Also, Venus conjuncts Mars in the first house.
- TheMagicHorsey 6y ago
  Perfect reply.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
wcoenen 6y ago
Bitcoin also broke through $12,300 in July 2019 and it went down from there...

bluetwo 6y ago

Do I read it correctly that it won't pay out crypto, but will only accept it? Does this mean they will amass a large amount of coin to speculate with in the market as they see fit?

_-___________-_ 6y ago
Well, no, since they have to pay for the payouts somehow, they will need to be exchanging those crypto balances for fiat somehow.

ratonroy 6y ago

Nice

benlivengood 6y ago

> Cryptocurrency payments on PayPal will be settled using fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, meaning merchants will not receive payments in virtual coins, the company said. This is worse than any of the existing exchanges. It's the robin hood of holding cryptocurrency.

ratonroy 6y ago

Llol

ratonroy 6y ago

GCA10 1 day ago [–] I like Graham's points about overconfidence, peer groups and (judicious amounts of) ignorance, all of which he champions quite strongly. But drilling deeper on "rate of change" is an undervalued element that deserves a closer look. The best innovators are really good at taking Version 1.0 and figuring out what rework will turn it into a better 2.0, and then 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, etc. This is an identifiable skill! It can be cultivated. Once you've got it, the failings of Version 1.0 do not ruin your self-esteem. You just get to work on fixing them. And not enough people think about this systematically. One of my favorite museum stops of all time was the British Library, where a glass case held Paul McCartney's first draft of "Yesterday." You could see, cross-out by cross-out, how a somewhat awkward ballad got turned into a pop classic.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Can you buy cryptocurrency on PayPal and transfer it to an external wallet?

aww_dang 6y ago
No. >Can I transfer crypto into and out of PayPal? Currently you can only hold the cryptocurrencies that you buy on PayPal in your account. Additionally, the crypto in your account cannot be transfered to other accounts on or off PayPal https://twitter.com/Cz4182925/status/1318912301488025602/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Cz4182925/status/1318912301488025602/pho...
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  Wut? So what are you buying?
  - bondarchuk 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_(stock_market) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket_shop_(stock_market)
    - megous 6y ago
      It says this was banned, but how's that much different from CFDs, lol.

excalibur 6y ago

I'd really like to see fewer people trying to normalize proof-of-work crypto like bitcoin. This stuff isn't remotely sustainable.

AviationAtom 6y ago
It should be interesting to see an ecosystem pop up around something that isn't really even sustainable now I also wonder how the China factor will play into the future of it: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/#:~:text=Pool%20Concentration%20in%20China https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/pools/#:~:text=Po...
throw51319 6y ago
Yeah lol. Seems like a ridiculous use of power. And as the number of transactions grow, the use increases right?
- phocion 6y ago
  Securing the integrity of a monetary network that coordinates economic activity at a global level is not a "ridiculous use of power". Christmas lights are a ridiculous use of power
  - throw51319 6y ago
    Yeah but we already coordinate economic activity with big banks and everything, Paypal etc. But the energy cost per transaction is way way less, right?
    - phocion 6y ago
      If you only look at the energy cost of running the servers where the banks store their databases, sure. But what about the energy cost of powering air-conditioned and brightly lit office buildings all around the world, thousands of branches and ATMs, security systems such as secure vaults and armored trucks, and the millions of employees commuting every day (or in 2020, Zooming into meetings all day)? It adds up real quick. The difference is that the Bitcoin network is completely transparent and auditable, and we can accurately estimate the total energy used to secure it; whereas the banking network is opaque and we can only guesstimate how much energy they really consume

nonamenoslogan 6y ago

Awesome, a reason for me to leave PayPal completely.

lgats 6y ago

https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-New-Service-Enabling-Users-to-Buy-Hold-and-Sell-Cryptocurrency https://newsroom.paypal-corp.com/2020-10-21-PayPal-Launches-... initially featuring Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin, directly within the PayPal digital wallet

throw51319 6y ago

I still don't see the point of Bitcoin beyond being a digital gold. And monero for anonymous purchases online. Every country is still gonna have their currencies, and the most stable country is going to be used as the peg currency. Right now that's USD. So basically Bitcoin is a digital gold, but the underlying trust mechanism is inefficient. Thus it gets centralized at big nodes, like banks or exchanges. Thus it becomes basically a digital gold. You might as well have banks offer "Digital Gold, $1000 an ounce!"

ColanR 6y ago
Wasn't that how it was designed? Even the term 'miner' was based on gold mining. I think the only difference is that gold used to be the currency itself, not just what backed the currency, and BTC tried to be both.
phocion 6y ago
How is the underlying trust mechanism inefficient? You can run a fully validating Bitcoin node on an old laptop without any issues. Even a raspberry pi can handle it.
- throw51319 6y ago
  Yeah but isn't it like, as the number of transactions increase the computing power must increase? So if you had the world transacting on the blockchain ledger, it would take a crazy amount of computing power just to validate?
  - xur17 6y ago
    No, that's not how it works.
    - throw51319 6y ago
      So why do they have farms in china for bitcoin mining?
  - 6y ago

afrojack123 6y ago

I understand the game plan. US financial institutions will accept bitcoin into its system but only pay merchants in USD. Bitcoin in, USD out. The bitcoin won't be let out because it is digital gold. Go long bitcoin. The federal government and its henchmen (banks, financial institutions) are acquiring bitcoin.

pedro-guimaraes 6y ago

So crypto is going mainstream...

iphorde 6y ago

What will be most interesting will be the commission fee they charge. If they're competitive, then this might become my new go to. Paypal is usually expensive on their transactions normally.

artaak 6y ago

I've got the invite to paypal's beta program for crypto. Honestly, you've got to be mad to be dealing with paypal. I've read anecdotes from people, losing access to their accounts, locked up money in paypal, etc... It all seemed to be just stories, seemed rare, circumstances unclear. Until one day this summer, out of the blue, paypal demanded ID of my spouse (for her account), and then after reviewing it, "permanently limited" the account, gloriously exclaiming:" Aha, we got your information, now you won't be able to use your current account nor open a new one!" Trying to get to the customer support is yet another saga, and I will spare your time, but the net result is nil. Nobody in the support knows why the ban happened (there was no real reason to ban a paypal customer with over 8+ years, buying some random stuff on ebay), nobody can revert it, nobody really cares and there are no appeals. Receiving a note from paypal today regarding crypto looked like a bad, really dumb joke to me and an insult for my spouse. You gotta be completely clueless or insane to trust this shitty company with your crypto. One of the key points for crypto is the lack of "deplatforming", which the sinister paypal does left and right, at the same time not even being able to explain its actions, nor comprehend consequences. Paypal - never!

dannyw 6y ago
May I offer another tale: • PayPal account holder for 14 years. • Occasionally sell on eBay, and send/receive payments for freelancing work (maybe $10k a year) • Semi-regularly buy and sell bitcoin for PayPal (about $1-2k a month) • Never had eBay buyers claim DOA or anything suspicious, including high value sales (think GPUs, etc). • As of a year ago, added to the “Funds Now” program which means my money will never be placed on hold, even during a dispute. • The program worked as intended, as I was able to access my funds even during a dispute. • For disputes I’ve had to make, they’ve always been resolved in my favour. • Back when they had phone support pre-COVID, I always got local reps who knew what they’re doing. On the other hand, last month my bank banned me and closed my accounts for depositing money into a local, regulated bitcoin exchange; with a letter giving me one day to sort out alternate banking agreements. Go figure.
- artaak 6y ago
  Look, believe it or not, I am in the same boat - never had issues with paypal, but neither I'm a heavy user. Randomness and the severity of paypal actions is a huge issue for me. The subject of the discussion is paypal's surprise wedding with crypto. As stated in the above comment, my argument is: from customer perspective it is a bad, crazy proposition. Hey, paypal has a loooong history of random, inexplicable deplatforming of customers, and mixing that corporate attribute with crypto makes sense only on executive powerpoint slides.

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

Is Paypal still working? It used to be the payment mechanism everyone had to use (not with pleasure) and people even transacted using it for P2P transfer. I haven't really seen it in a while, someone asked me on marketplace if I could receive payment with it (instead of the typical venmo) and I just assumed it was a scam.

spoopyskelly 6y ago
Is <multi billion dollar company> still working? Yeah. They also own Venmo.
doublepg23 6y ago
I use it all the time for r/hardwareswap on Reddit.

ur-whale 6y ago

Two huge problems with this, one a consequence from the other: - you don't own the keys and therefore don't actually own the crypto, just a vague IOU from payapl - paypal can therefore credit you for as much crypto as you'd like (in exchange for your fiat) without actually owning/controlling *any* crypto at all, since there is no way for a user to ask for a crypto-hard proof that the coins they own actually exist. At the risk of sounding repetitive: not you keys, not your Bitcoins.

tsjq 6y ago

Palantir wants to see your crypto currency transactions too.

phreack 6y ago

Only available for U.S. account holders, that's a big detail.

MrMan 6y ago

My sole objection to bitcoin is also a really big one - energy use and its impact on climate. For that reason alone, it should be a nonstarter, it is really sad to see it flourishing when we already have a variety of types of money. A government could make a crypto currency without the hashing part, and save us a lot of energy. I don’t care about the libertarian part of this, because we cannot escape the need to create and enforce rules and work together, so we will always need government.

hackersHack 6y ago

This autta go over Well

AngryData 6y ago

Its all fun and games until paypal freezes your account for "suspicious activity" then keeps the cryptocoins for themselves when you fail to jump through 20 hoops at their demand.