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I would certainly disagree that being able to online shop using Paypal is the whole point of cryptocurrency. Having the ability to easily and securely exchange
by cactus2093 6y ago
I would certainly disagree that being able to online shop using Paypal is the whole point of cryptocurrency. Having the ability to easily and securely exchange with others is the whole point, but doing it conveniently on a daily basis over existing payment rails is not the whole point or even that important.
If a government decides to censor fiat networks to prevent certain transactions, the fact that paypal accepts bitcoin for those transactions is irrelevant. The company you're buying from as well as Paypall will still need to follow KYC laws and will be obligated not to transact with you.
In that scenario you're already fully living outside the law, you'll have to transact as anonymously as possible, exchanging crypto in secret in person or over the dark web or what have you. It doesn't matter whether major above board institutions like Paypal or Stripe accept bitcoin or not.
- pcthrowaway 6y agoIf paypal only allowed users to pay for things in USD it would also greatly defeat the purpose of Paypal. Instead, they offer automatic conversion (at a rate favourable to them no doubt) from other currencies. They certainly wouldn't say "If you hold EUR you can take it to a currency exchange and change it for USD, then send it to us". They would have no global hold if they did that. Likewise, barring access to users of a certain national currency damages the global utility of that country's currency; it's silly of them to do that if there are no regulatory obstacles, and I'd argue they're strongly incentivized to find ways around those obstacles. Whether it's paypal or not, it's greatly useful to have some way to pay for things with cryptocurrency, and payment companies have an economic incentive to add support for crypto payments as well