Do you have #PayPal? Approximately every two months, PayPal makes changes to its international payment platform. As of yesterday, PayPal executive Jose Fernandez da Ponte announced during day 3 of Consensus 2021 that the payments leader will soon allow "users [to] withdraw cryptocurrency to third-party wallets." If you have PayPal, you already know you can buy crypto through PayPal.

The panel was quite interesting (and was free to watch). You may sign up for a free account at #Coindesk and have a look at the conference over the past 3 weeks (1 per week).

Topics Discussed

Buying and Selling

PayPal is developing the means for you to sell your crypto or use it for payments where retailers accept PayPal. It occurs to me that this will be useful to break free of fiat currency.

Over the past 60 days, the US government went from printing $5 trillion dollars to $60 trillion. Paper currency is losing its value. Indeed, since 1913, the US dollar has lost 96% of its value. As we know, fiat currency always fails.

One of the interesting questions asked by the moderator to the PayPal exec was whether the payments giant was going to issue their own crypto. Da Ponte sideswiped the question by stating "it was too early for that." Reading between the lines and observing his expression told me that this too is in the works, on the cool.

Central Bank Digital Currency

Abbreviated CDBC, several governments are developing the means to issue coins from banks. They have recognized that digital currency is the future. China and Sweden already have it to some extent.

The moderator asked the PayPal executive whether CDBC coins would become the mainstay and hence wipe out competing cryptocurrency. He believes, as I do, that both will flourish. However, CDBC's are still in the future, as code must be written.

Benefits and Caveats

I've been using PayPal for years. It's how my clients pay me for my writing. PayPal has its ups and downs. For one, it has become increasingly restrictive. Second, their fees are 3% of any transfer money one makes. For example, when I sell an article for $100 I receive about $96 after PayPal and #bank fees are deducted, plus I have to pay taxes on my earnings. It occurs to me that PayPal could boost its consumer base for crypto by lowering transfer fees. For example, #Binance fees are considerably lower.

One of the other caveats of using PayPal is their slow resolution center. When money is waiting to be transferred or in dispute, the payments service is collecting interest. Just think about how much money it is earning from that alone!

eBay owns PayPal. eBay own Craigslist. There is a lot of fraud on both of these popular websites. It stands to reason that fraud will occur when they initiate CDBC currency, too. As for me, I'll be waiting for the payment system to work out the bugs before using it, and only if they minimize fees for transferring my #BCH and other crypto. Right now there are better options.