TL;DR
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PayPal has just announced the rollout of its own US dollar pegged stablecoin ‘PayPal USD’ – which will be built on the Ethereum network – and backed by traditional assets.
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(Think: short-term treasuries, dollar deposits and cash equivalents – that kind of boring stuff).
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Will it be easy to use outside of the PayPal ecosystem? Probably not (at least not at first) – but that’s probably a good thing in terms of user adoption.
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Being able to do everything smoothly within a single app that most people already have on their phones is much less intimidating.
Full story
Most people:
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Learn to ride a bike before they learn to drive.
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Listen to an artist’s album before buying tickets to their concert.
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Get to know a person before you marry them…unless you’re Chevy’s Uncle Dave, in which case you’re a hopeless romantic (aaaw!) on his seventh marriage (yikes!).
Today we have a similar “learn to walk before you run” example, but this time in the crypto space.
PayPal has just announced the rollout of its 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 – that kind of boring stuff).
Will it be easy to use outside of the PayPal ecosystem? Probably not (at least, not in the beginning).
But it will likely act as a super easy introduction to cryptocurrency for those who are yet to get started with Web3 and crypto – which is why we love it.
This is where we’re going…
Instead of having to:
Create a crypto exchange account → add credit card details → buy a stablecoin → send it to your own custodial wallet → use it to pay for things on Web3 compatible websites.
The PayPal stablecoin experience will probably look more like this:
Open the PayPal app → click on ‘Buy PayPal USD’ → use it to make payments/buy crypto in the app.
The use cases will probably be limited compared to the traditional method – but that’s probably a good thing in terms of user adoption.
As more and more places start accepting crypto payments as standard, it’s much less intimidating to be able to do everything smoothly within a single app that most people already have on their phones.
We’d love to see it!