Kraken CEO: PayPal will remain a choke point despite bitcoin adoption

Kraken CEO stated that PayPal supporting Bitcoin might be a huge leap for the asset’s adoption, but it won’t change Paypal’s policies on account closures.

Sources have reported that payment processors PayPal and Venmo are planning to offer the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies to their platforms. While the news may mean a huge leap for Bitcoin’s adoption, Kraken CEO believes that the move is not all roses for the crypto industry.

PayPal’s entry into crypto

CoinDesk reported that payments processing giant PayPal is looking to offer crypto trading services. According to the website’s source, the payment processing giants are going to offer the purchase and selling of crypto directly from PayPal and Venmo and offer wallet services to store the assets.

This is a huge leap for crypto adoption as the payment giants would enable hundreds of millions of people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on their mobile phones. PayPal boasts a huge user base with more than 325 million active accounts as of 2020. Venmo, on the other hand has a user base of 40 million people.

Kraken CEO

Kraken CEO Jesse Powell noted that the news is indeed a huge leap for crypto adoption. However, Powell added that there are a few strings attached to PayPal’s entry into the crypto industry.

Powell stated that while it is great that PayPal is offering crypto trading services, “don’t expect PP to change their policies on account closures.” Powell went on to say that the company remains “a centralized chokepoint” that the government will use for extrajudicial sanctions. Powell finished his tweet by referencing the “Not your keys,” not your Bitcoin slogan.