Here’s some confirmation that crypto isn’t entirely toxic: In the hours after internet payments pioneer PayPal announced a stablecoin on Ethereum, the company’s stock rallied 2%. That may seem a tidy rally for anyone used to triple-digit gains on s**tcoins, but is respectable in the world of late-stage, slow-growth tech companies that have just about reached peak market saturation (PayPal reports having more than 400 million active users, and accounts for ~70% of eBay transactions).
Of course, as ever in the world of crypto, it’s not all sunshine and roses: After the surprise PYUSD stablecoin announcement, a bevy of imposter tokens like “pepeyieldunibotsatoshidoge” (aka PYUSD) have launched on Ethereum, various layer 2s and BNB Smart Chain looking to capitalize on post-announcement ignorance and buzz. The largest of these saw nearly $3 million in trading volume in mere hours, and almost assuredly more than a few will turn out to be rug pulls.
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But this isn’t new for crypto, an industry racked by competing visions, contradictory strategies and occasional moral scruples. As the meme goes: inside crypto are two wolves. There’s money crypto and tech crypto. Regulation wanters and law-avoiders. The build-and-break-things contingent and those who go slow and steady.
It’s enough headbutting and disagreement to wonder how exactly crypto made it this far – that one of the most used payments companies is tapping the Ethereum mainnet, high fees be damned, for its next rung of expansion.
And so PayPal’s stablecoin is no different: PYUSD, which to begin with is U.S.-only, will eventually be a near-universally accessible payments option that is subject to just as much surveillance and “censorship” as PayPal or its subsidiary Venmo today. It’s crypto, sans crypto – or fintech with the benefit of blockchain. It’s the two wolves in conflict.
It should be no surprise which wolf is dominant in PayPal, the side that wants to work from within the system, rather than outside. The publicly-traded company, which launched the careers of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and the rest of the “PayPal Mafia,” learned pretty…
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