PayPal Just Made Its Own Cryptocurrency

TL;DR

• PayPal has just announced the rollout of its very own US dollar-pegged stablecoin ‘PayPal USD’ – which will be built on the Ethereum network – and backed by traditional assets.

• (Think: short-term treasuries, dollar deposits, and cash equivalents – boring stuff like that).

• Is it going to be easy to use outside of the PayPal ecosystem? Probably not (at least, not at first) – but that’s probably a good thing as far as user adoption goes.

• Being able to do everything smoothly within a single app that most folks already have on their phones is far less intimidating.

Full Story

Most folks:

• Learn to ride a bike, before they learn to drive a car.

• Listen to an artist’s album before buying tickets to their concert.

• Get to know a person before marrying them…unless you’re Chevy’s uncle Dave, in which case you’re a hopeless romantic (aaaw!) who is on his seventh marriage (yikes!).

Today we have a similar example of ‘learning to walk, before you run,’ but this time in the crypto space.

PayPal has just announced the rollout of its very own US dollar-pegged stablecoin ‘PayPal USD’ – which will be built on the Ethereum network – and backed by traditional assets.

(Think: short-term treasuries, dollar deposits, and cash equivalents – boring stuff like that).

Is it going to be easy to use outside of the PayPal ecosystem? Probably not (at least, not at first).

But it’ll probably act as a super simple introduction to cryptocurrency for those yet to get into Web3 and crypto – and that’s why we love it.

Here’s what we’re getting at…

Instead of having to:

Set up a crypto exchange account → add credit card details → buy a stablecoin → send it to your self custody wallet → use it to pay for stuff on Web3 enabled websites.

The PayPal stablecoin experience will probably look more like this:

Open the PayPal app → click ‘buy PayPal USD’ → use it to make payments/purchase crypto inside the app.

The use cases will probably be limited in comparison to the traditional method – but that’s probably a good thing as far as user adoption goes.

As more and more places begin to accept crypto payments as standard, being able to do everything smoothly within a single app that most folks already have on their phones is far less intimidating.

We love to see it!