Is a PayPal Stablecoin a Good, or Bad Idea?

TL;DR

• PayPal released a US dollar pegged stablecoin known as PYUSD this year on the Ethereum blockchain.

• People are up in arms about the greater influence it will have on the crypto and finance industry. Both ‘good’ and ‘bad.’

• Debates are hard to settle. So we’ll defer to the little girl from the Old El Paso ad and say “why don’t we have both?” Centralized stablecoins (and monetary systems as a whole) are fine by us, as long as there are plenty of healthy decentralized options to choose from.

Full Story

Okay okay okay. Let’s play pretend.

We’re in debate class.

The question is:

“What is your position on the role of governance, supporting innovation in the field of bio technology?“

Jk, jk. This is a crypto publication.

So it’s a debate about stablecoins, specifically:

“Pro-PayPal stablecoin” vs. “Anti-PayPal stablecoin”.

We reviewed the materials last class (we actually wrote about this in August).

And now you get to take sides.

Here is a refresher:

PayPal released a US dollar pegged stablecoin known as PYUSD this year on the Ethereum blockchain.

People are up in arms about the greater influence it will have on the crypto and finance industry. Both ‘good’ and ‘bad.’

So here’s the breakdown:

Up first: Pro-PayPal Stablecoin

• Seeing a globally recognized/utilized brand like PayPal embrace blockchain tech helps to legitimize both stablecoins and the broader crypto space.

• PayPal is potentially exposing tons of new people to Web3/crypto. There are millions of people connected to PayPal…merchants, suppliers, customers, parent companies.

• If PYUSD was accessible across multiple blockchains…whoa. It could make for a much easier crypto onboarding process!

• A stablecoin hosted on PayPal could help a whole slew of people, that don’t have access to traditional banking, become banked (yay!)

Pretty cool.

Okay, now for: Anti-PayPal Stablecoin

• The whole point of Web3 is decentralization. PYUSD could open up TONS of doors for Web3, but ultimately it would mean there is a large, centralized tech company holding a bunch of power and money. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to get away from.

Debates are hard to settle. So we’ll defer to the little girl from the Old El Paso ad and say “why don’t we have both?”

Centralized stablecoins (and monetary systems as a whole) are fine by us, as long as there are plenty of healthy decentralized options to choose from.