Think again when using Paypal for crypto.
There seems to be hype around Paypal (and Revolut and others) when it comes to crypto adoption. Here's the catch: they adopt crypto, you don't. You just help them do it.
First, Paypal said so right in their FAQ:
"You own the Cryptocurrency you buy on PayPal but will not be provided with a private key." Here
That is seriously misleading. To the point it reaches "OMG" levels of misleading. To anyone who knows anything about crypto this should be the biggest deal breaker. Not your keys means not your crypto.
As Elon said :
You pay for the fees, the transaction tax, all of it, and they get to hold actual crypto. Revolut does the same thing. They lock the crypto and you can only buy/sell through them with a nice fee on top.
Bitcoin is a finite resource, it absolutely cannot be printed out of thin air, faked or mined indefinitely. A finite resource that is more and more in demand. See where I'm getting at? Paypal and the rest who practice the same method use you to help them get their hands on as much of this finite resource as they can. Think of it as digital gold: who owns most of it dictates it's value. The more they own, the higher their power over the crypto space.
This also looks like a trial phase to test public adoption/resistance to money as a digital asset. This, and the CBDC(central bank digital currency, aka cashless societies) agenda that is advertised as the next big thing should completely trip all the alarms of crypto enthusiasts. Centralizing power is something completely antithetical to crypto. The very principles at it's core are against centralization and for decentralization.
Some people(a lot by what I've seen) believe Paypal's adoption of crypto to be something good and beneficial for crypto in general as it raises awareness and promotes crypto to us regular people. I think they're fooling themselves by praising a trojan horse whose purpose is gaining mindshare of regular users/crypto newbies/wannabes.
Could be something like a classic embrace/extend/extinguish move, for example:
- Fake enthusiasm and promote adoption of an asset that is a major threat to central banking (evidenced by their constant bashing over the years only to recently completely change their tune)
- Not really giving the users access to said asset,
- Make the user pay for it all,
- Aquire as much as possible of said asset, build mindshare around your platform,
- Give all sorts of incentives like ease of use and speed and bonuses and whatnot to absorb all value of that asset into CBDCs till CBDCs become majority.
- Banks control CBDCs completely so they will probably be promoted like crazy and integrated everywhere in record time.
Also, did you know that plans for CBDCs include money that is tied to your digital identity ? - for your safety, of course. only you can spend it, or receive it. - Or money that has a limited lifetime ? You can spend it only within a certain amount of time. Savings ? sheesh, use them today or they're nulled by tomorrow.
Dystopian ? not at all, they even boast them as features.
Paypal Revolut and the banks saw that crypto is great. They just hate that they can't control it.
Crypto is the future no doubt about that. But you must chose to learn a bit about actual crypto that empowers you, take control of your keys, transactions, finances, wallets etc or let the banks do what the banks do, and take control of your finances even more than they already do. Way more.
This is one of the best if not the best chance we ever had to take control of our finances if we refuse to give our power away. It's literally up to each of us to get educated on how to hold and trade crypto by ourselves without any intermediary.
And thankfully there are lots of solutions emerging every day to make actual crypto adoption easier.
Your keys, your crypto đ