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PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

newsroom.paypal-corp.com

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Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#241

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Animats wrote: post #113
Tarball10 wrote: post #20

Holding money (or crypto) in PayPal is a terrible idea. They are not a bank, they do not abide by banking regulations. They can lock you out of your account and your money at any time and leave you going in circles with their offshore support. Yes, they are somewhat of a necessary evil if you do any online peer-to-peer buying/selling, since they are the only money transfer service that provides some level of "buyer p…

> Link one bank account (not your primary) to PayPal to receive money, and transfer received money immediately. Costs 1.5%. Or wait a few days.[1] Plus a fee for receiving cryptocurrency. There are additional fees for buying cryptocurrencies, other than PayPal's own. And none of this is FDIC insured. [1] https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/paypal/pp-balance-tnc?loc...

Their fees for cryptocurrency are small (between 1.5% - 2.5% depending on amounts, higher amounts have a lower fee), but they take it on both the buying and selling end. So if the amounts you're moving require a 1.8% fee, then for both buying and selling you end up with 3.6% in fees. Coinbase and most other CEXes charge this and they claim part of the fee is due to instability in the price, so this fee acts as a spread they can use to not lose money.

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#242

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Animats wrote: post #178
margalabargala wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they meant, initiate the transfer immediately. There's no need to pay for the "fast" transfer vs standard ACH.

Does PayPal support FedNow? Bank-to-bank transfers in under 10 seconds, for $0.045 each? Nah.

How many banks do? Not just theoretically, but practically.

Mine does supposedly but does not let me, the account holder, use FedNow. Instead I'm stuck using Zelle which I can hit the limits of just by paying a mortgage payment.

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#243

Post by Karrot_Kream »

stathibus wrote: post #229
ertian wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of cash is that it represents transferrable value that doesn't require an intermediary between you and the person you're transacting with. And yet, banks and credit card companies exist and deal with cash. This does not mean that cash is a useless concept.

Okay and the key difference between crypto and cash/credit/whatever is supposedly that it is decentralized. Or have we abandoned that false premise now?

That credit cards exist didn't mean cash stopped existing. Likewise, just because CEXes and L2s exist doesn't mean L1 cryptocurrency doesn't exist. You can still grab a non-custodial wallet and still manage your own crypto. Today Coinbase has a debit card that can sell crypto at FMV, apply their spread (1.88% I think?), and immediately use that to pay off USD denominated bills. So if your crypto is in your wallet you can just send your Coinbase wallet the funds for the purchase and then swipe your debit card to pay.

Coinbase's spread isn't the worst thing to pay for the service of having a debit card and auto-selling, but if you also buy crypto using Coinbase, they double-dip on the fee.

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#244

Post by Yizahi »

joahnn_s wrote: post #215

The whole purpose of crypto is to exchange money online like we exchange cash in person, so who wants PayPal as a middleman on a tech designed not to have a middleman? Who will use that

Scammers, who will need to exit the scheme at some point, while laundering gains in the process. Good thing techbros at PayPal will help with that minor nuisance :)

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#245

Post by saghm »

freefaler wrote: post #223
joahnn_s wrote: post #215

The whole purpose of crypto is to exchange money online like we exchange cash in person, so who wants PayPal as a middleman on a tech designed not to have a middleman? Who will use that

For people who won't setup any wallet this can be useful. Self custody wallets are scary for some users.

What's the intersection of people who are afraid to set up their own wallet, want to use Ethereum and Bitcoin, and are happy to have PayPal as the one performing their transactions for them? Any of those might be reasonable independently, but it's hard to imagine someone fitting all three.

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#246

Post by jgalt212 »

majkinetor wrote: post #204
jgalt212 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your bank does not offer custodial or joint accounts?

I don't want custodial or joint accounts. Then my kids call me to ask about stuff on their accounts. I want them to have their own thing. I want total separation of my own accounts from anything else in the world, including my family.

These of accounts do have read access so you can send all your childrens' phone calls straight to voicemail. :)

Also, you can have complete separation if your accounts are at Bank A, and the dependents are at Bank B.

I'm not trying to convince you, but moreso keep others from making parenting harder than it already is.

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#247

Post by Karrot_Kream »

sowbug wrote: post #117
jmcgough wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They earned $1.2 billion last quarter. That drain must be in a very nice part of town.

It's the same drain that Meta's been circling, the one that exists in HN commenters' minds.

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#248

Post by krrishd »

delusional wrote: post #234
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal 20 years ago made it easy to engage in internet commerce across various world currencies. And now users of PayPal have an easy way to commerce with two more world currencies using a familiar trusted interface. Another way PayPal as the middle man helps: "Unclaimed links expire after 10 days", which sounds like it avoids the problem of accidentally sending bitcoin into the void.

I completely understand why I would want paypal as an intermediary in the unlikely case I wanted to send bitcoin to somebody. I think what makes less sense to me is why people who actually like crypto would want paypal. I want a regulated middleman answerable to democratic legislation. Crypto people (largely) don't. I guess this is mostly a play that crypto people won't actually care if there's a middleman if it crea…

>why people who actually like crypto would want paypal

this snippet is everything: "to PayPal, Venmo, as well a rapidly growing number of digital wallets across the world that support crypto and stablecoins"

this is effectively PayPal taking its "closed-loop" payment network, and opening it up to any wallet capable of receiving crypto/stablecoins - which is still a big deal.

your counterparty no longer has to have a PayPal account for you to pay them via PayPal - they can have any crypto wallet and get paid by you - which is in line with much of the crypto vision around global interoperability/payment acceptance/etc. you could compare to Visa/card acceptance as another global payment rail - but the difference here is closer to the difference between global card payments (easy) and global bank transfers (hard)

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#249

Post by Karrot_Kream »

glitchc wrote: post #205
majkinetor wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude... I can buy anything anywhere. If it supports regular cards, it supports crypto card. My first test was to buy candy btw in the local corner shop in the middle of nowhere. It is really funny how people on HN can be so stubborn.

Is it a Visa or Mastercard then?

Venmo and Coinbase also offer debit cards (Venmo -> Mastercard, Coinbase -> Visa) that work for this purpose. Like OP says it's trivial to get (just open the app, enable the Debit Card feature, read the disclosures (pretty standard stuff but do read them), then add to Google Wallet.)

Re: PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin

#250

Post by Yizahi »

unleaded wrote: post #152

real question because i don't know, what do people actually buy with crypto other than other money or illegal stuff? i presume paypal won't be happy with you buying/selling drugs with it

Tax evasion mostly. Tokens are used to obscure movement of assets from both governments, but then you need to safely exit into real money in the recipient country, and preferably make them all clean and legal. Now you need to use some P2P exchanges, rely on some less reputable intermediaries, while PayPal will streamline the process.
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