Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, has taken to Twitter to express his views regarding PayPal’s recent move into the crypto landscape. Garlinghouse expressed his disappointment, claiming that some fundamental tenets and benefits of crypto are spurned.
2 steps forward, 1 step back…Great to see a payment pioneer leaning in, BUT disappointing some fundamental tenets / benefits of crypto are spurned. I suspect PayPal is concerned about the (wait for it…) regulatory uncertainty, impacting its roll-out on a number of levels. https://t.co/aPVv85jrNR
— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) October 21, 2020
PayPal’s recent announcement will allow customers to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This appears to have sent Bitcoin soaring to a new yearly high above $13,000.
Although PayPal has over 340 million active users, and will essentially provide these users with an onramp to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the payment giant will not provide users with a private key to their crypto being held on its network. At this point, it would be important to embed a well known saying in the crypto industry:
“Your keys, your crypto. Not your keys, not your crypto.”
An even more frustrating factor is that users can only hold their crypto in their PayPal wallets and will not be able to transfer it to other wallets. No keys and no withdrawals..
Garlinghouse suspects that PayPal’s decision to not allow withdrawals and transfers was because of the regulatory uncertainty in the US. Ripple has recently been hinting at a possible relocation of its headquarters out of the US, due to regulatory uncertainty.
Feature image by Fortune Finance from flickr
