A week after Tesla announced they're offering Bitcoin payments options for their EVs along with traditional forms of payments, PayPal announced today project "Checkout with Crypto". A service that allow PayPal users to spend crypto using their accounts at 30 million shops around the world.
"As the use of digital payments and digital currencies accelerates, the introduction of Checkout with Crypto continues our focus on driving mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies, while continuing to offer PayPal customers choice and flexibility in the ways they can pay using the PayPal wallet. Enabling cryptocurrencies to make purchases at businesses around the world is the next chapter in driving the ubiquity and mass acceptance of digital currencies."
-Dan Schulman, president and CEO, PayPal
That comes from the current PayPal CEO, the former one used to say that Bitcoin is useless. Bitcoin is not useless at all and in fact it's one of the four cryptocurrencies along with Ethereum, Bitcoin Crash and Litecoin that can be used by PayPal customers from USA to pay for all sort of goods via the payment service. How is it going to work?
Quite simple. The users of the "Checkout with Crypto" service will be notified at checkout that their crypto holdings on their PayPal account are sufficient to cover the purchase and if these choose to, they can opt for crypto payments instead of directly paying with cash. These are not actual crypto payments as the crypto assets are instantly converted into fiat by PayPal, supposedly at a bit lower rate than on a regular exchange and the settlement is made in fiat.
The process is nothing fancy, as Binance, crypto.com, Monolith and others are doing that "for ages" but it's a step further for the mass adoption of crypto. We're not talking ETFs and other regulations that some crypto enthusiasts might expect, but the use case for crypto as a means of payment and wealth transfer. I'd say that this is more beneficial for the crypto industry than any ETF in the world.
The true disruption and mass adoption for blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies is to have them eat the banks lunch, dinner and every snack they have in the bag, and have people around the world earning them, trading, farming and spending such currencies as we currently do with the government issued money. At least that's what I'm expecting from this space, to become a self sustainable economy.
Are we there yet?
No, but we have to start from somewhere and PayPal is not a brand that's involved in crypto to be ignored. 2021 has been so far more than prolific for the crypto space and it feels like every other week we read about another company getting into this types of assets, accepting them, integrating them in their business and so on. Yes we have typical FUD as in the case of the India ban as well, but that's just white noise.
Sooner than later all will have to accept this currency of the world and adapt to the new trend. We don't have to adapt to their rules and ask for permissions, that's misleading imo, the world needs to repave its economy roads to host crypto in its shiny promenade. Too much energy wasted on approvals and pending acceptance from governments. Fuck them...
As long as one can earn, trade, farm and use crypto in daily life what's the point of begging acceptance from governments. They can try and fight it, but they'll fail. As @taskmaster4450le said in a post some time ago, you can't fight technology and that's what India and others are trying. They'll fail for sure and by trying to fight this disruptive technology all they're gonna achieve is delaying their crypto integration. Happy to see crypto protruding our daily lives as we speak and even happier to be part of this revolution.
Thank for attention,
Adrian
