Yes, the newsroom is linked to at the bottom of paypal.com.

I assume this is a trolling effort on your part?

Once upon a time, their corporate and developer sites were x.com even, before they moved to a more professional domain and later sold that one back to Elon.

PayPal, teaching users to become phishing victims since 2019

https://www.attejuvonen.fi/paypal-sends-phishing-emails/

That is the point! You don't need companies like Paypal... Companies often offer services that are "not needed" because people like convenience, ease of use, etc.

You don't need Paypal to use Bitcoin, but there's nothing in the spec that prohibits it.

This point is conveniently missing. There's simply more money to be made! Now get out of here with your nonsense ideas of decentralizing money. It's bad for business.

The Internet is decentralized but most of us use ISPs to connect to it. Most of can't access the Internet without these companies.

In practice, the word "decentralized" just speaks to whether anyone can join in the protocol if they want. But it doesn't mean the protocol is easy to implement.

The power of not needing companies like PayPal does not preclude them from offering services that ease its use.

The benefit comes from having the option to go elsewhere. A business that cannot lock you in is more likely to try to retain your custom by offering a good service.

PayPal has been slowly circling the drain for years, grasping at highly questionable Hail Mary's like crypto coins.

It's not that simple, there's a niuance there - tradeoffs are to to be made if we want to have a decentralized system; it will not scale to the whole planet, if running a node is accessible; and it must be so, otherwise it's not decentralized.

The reality is, we will have a mix of custodian - through third-party - and self-sovereign usage; depending on the context and user's skill

They are probably not the one that care, it's most likely Visa / MasterCard that have an issue with that.

US govt is financed at whatever rate the stable-coin issuer finances at, which is likely a mixture of T-bills, fed overnight interest rates (via bank accounts), and other assets.

didn't you just explain the USD game? (fleecing the poor worldwide through inflation...) stablecoins don't change much in this.

   - Crypto industry (more volume to skim)
   - US Treasury (more demand for debt)

   - Countries with less-stable currencies (lose further control of monetary policy)
   - China / OPEC (miss opportunity to push dedollarization further)

   - Money laundering (once volume grows, KYC and traceability will follow)

That's not how any of this works. You may not receive any interest on your stablecoin balance, but the issuer certainly does. Why would they offer to lend money to the US government at zero when they can get the market rate and pocket it? What's more, these are mostly short-term instruments This means any increase in inflation will be reflected in their yield.

> congrats if you buy a stablecoin - you've effectively financed the US gvt at 0%.

USDC on Coinbase yields interest. The USDC people make a little spread on it, but you aren't financing the US government at 0%, your financing them at market rates. There is counterparty risk just like with a bank. Unlike a bank, there are liquid markets onchain for other fungibles.

Excellent question.

This is all true, but are they actually any worse than any other crypto exchange? I just take it as a given that a crypto exchange can lock me out and steal my money at any time with no legal consequence, and so I try to keep as little money in them as possible. And at least PayPal is older and likely to have more senior engineers and fewer vibe coders, and thus be less likely to lose everything because of an elementary security error.

Why does their support being "offshore" matter at all? If they wanted to provide good, user-friendly customer support, they would, regardless of where the reps are?

In europe, Paypal Sarl is a bank subject to bank regulations

If you link your bank, and approve direct debit (it’s just a popup with yes/later - very risky move), they will eventually withdraw from it when there are any issues. And most likely you’ll lose more disputes when your bank is linked - but no proof of this so take it with a grain of salt.

Plus they have a history of freezing people’s money for months on end for flimsy reasons.

Just treat it as your checking account; for anything substantial, move it to the self-custody

I think the difference here is that Bitcoin is predictable deflationary vs fiat being unpredictable. If you can know in advance the rate, it becomes sorta like an investment vehicle, where instead of dividends you get appreciation of the assets.

To look at it another way - why one would spend $100 from their brokerage account if they know a year later they can spend $110?

People who hate crypto will hate anything that has anything to do with crypto.

People who love crypto will hate anything that has anything to do with legacy censorship-prone fraudulent financial institutions like PayPal.

Who is this for?