Bitcoin Forum

Earlier paypal have started to allow people to buy sell cryptocurrency (a few) but that was totally a stupid idea (not allowing users to withdraw fund). But they are going to change their decision and allow users to withdraw fund. I think this is great decision.
Source- https://www.coindesk.com/paypal-will-let-customers-withdraw-crypto-exec-says

One line on the article got caught my attention..

PayPalCoin?
"On a rumour that PayPal plans to launch its own stablecoin, da Ponte was more downbeat. “This is way too early,” he said. "
Repeat source link (https://www.coindesk.com/paypal-will-let-customers-withdraw-crypto-exec-says)

Wont be surprised that they would really be having their own coin but it doesnt really make a difference but honestly on the current changes that
they made then its actually a good news.

It is fairly easy to allow users to buy/sell crypto, all you would have to do is to use existing systems to check for available balance then send orders to a partner exchange. Allowing for crypto deposits and withdrawals is much more complex as you will need to manage the hot wallet and unspent outputs, to develop a system that doesn’t get tricked into sending the same withdrawal twice, etc.  A company holding millions or billions of dollars worth of bitcoin is not going to use existing open source software/solutions without first extensively testing said software, including how it integrates with their existing systems.

I am glad they will soon allow bitcoin withdrawals and hopefully this will stop most PayPal related scams around here. I don’t think I am the only one who finds this ironic though.

It looks like the author speculated about a PayPal stable coin, and PayPal shot down the speculation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but now PayPal allows to buy and sell Bitcoin only for customers from USA? They still haven't launched this thing globally.
Having crypto on platform like PayPal without option to withdraw it, it means that you don't even have real crypto. You can't see it on Blockchain, it's just some numbers on your account. So, if they will allow to withdraw crypto, it will be big step.

it's good news, but I still don't see a change in my paypal account, it's May and it hasn't added new features to everyone's accounts yet, I'm wondering if someday I will also benefit from these new features. It is complicated to live in Africa, it seems to be a place forgotten by everyone. impressive that everything good does not arrive in africa


my fear is that even when they launch globally, in africa it is not covered and is restricted only to europe and some countries in asia and latin america

The bigger step is if they launch it globally because this is where most of the adoption takes place, there are more Paypal users outside US who use their paypal account on freelance sites. In the currency exchange (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=53.0) paypal users are making it a business to buy and sell coins, they are doing it online for now but once paypal allows user to withdraw coins, it could be easy to make transactions to friends.

I believe they will go into that level. One step at a time.
They maybe realize that they are doing it wrong when users can't withdraw their coins to their own wallet.
So this move, is actually a good step to encourage their users to utilize their crypto services.
Because for long time crypto users, they won't touch PayPal when it comes to crypto transactions.

I was expecting this to happen from the very first day PayPal entered into cryptocurrency. As I was thinking, they are doing things step by step. The first step was letting some of their users buy, sell, and hodl crypto exclusively within their platform. That seemed to be a stupid idea to someone who has already been familiar with how cryptocurrencies should work. But I supposed those PayPal people who have carefully studied crypto should have already known beforehand that what they are offering is foolishness as far as what crypto represents. And they won't stick to it. They'd eventually do the right thing.

This shouldn't really be a shock to anyone. Cash App went the same path of only allowing buying and selling at the beginning, then implementing withdrawals after a while.

Indeed, but I don't understand why they've limited the whole thing to the US customers only ^{[it doesn't make sense]}.

Even if you can see it with an explorer or have the ability to withdraw it, it doesn't mean that you own anything unless it reaches your non-custodial wallet.

That's very true in fact up to this day there might be PayPal users that still not going back to Paypal anymore despite them allowing users to purchase crypto. They are going to earn from withdrawal fees I guess now this will be another issue for crypto users who engage in Paypal transactions. They still are testing the waters and if it could turn something, they'd best just turn the platform into an exchange if they want to profit.

My confident guess is that they're simply playing it safe in terms of regulations. PayPal is a huge business that it really isn't worth risking things by being close to the sort of "danger zone", whereas they could potentially piss off governments of certain countries (à la Binance).

At least, that is good news from Paypal allow their users to withdraw coins to their own wallet as that can make them popular not just for the payment method but they can become exchange in the future. Maybe that is their plan in the future since becoming an exchange can give them more profit. But they need to open this option to all of their users as that can help people who use Paypal can also invest in crypto directly from their account. Paypal needs more time to fully integrate their system with the blockchain and we need to let them work.

I do not see this news as positive. Many PayPal users are interested in the price, not in the technology and I do not believe that they have a technical background and responsibility to bear and protect their digital wallets.

The real change will be when you can pay in cryptocurrencies at PayPal, i.e. when there is a PayPal gateway that manages cryptocurrencies then it will be possible to pay using Bitcoin at any site that accept PayPal.


Overall, it is good to see that they have not stopped accepting Bitcoin for reasons of sustainability.

PayPal has been using many countries and governments allow it to use. But at the same time, crypto hasn't been supported by many governments where PayPal is allowed to use. So if PayPal enables crypto for all countries then those countries that don't support Bitcoin would ban PayPal then. So I don't think PayPal will attempt to allow the use of cryptocurrency via their wallet at all. Most probably that's why they are wondering to launch their own stable coin which would support by other country's governments since the stable coin will be backed by the real USD.

True. But unfortunately, some people need to learn the hard way. And not to mention that having the option and freedom of withdrawing their coins is no-where a bad thing. We could make the same arguments with Coinbase and Cash App or the whole cryptocurrency space in general— whereas most is still speculation.

Am sure PayPal did all this to first give themselves time to understand how the crypto market works before committing more resources to this.

Let's not forget crypto isn't like fiat, and for PayPal they understand this business quite well but when it comes to crypto its difficult to detect fraud and all illicit activities and to counter
this systems have to be put in place to try manage it which will take a lot of trail and error.

At the end of it all this is good news, bullish news to be precise!

My reading of the statement is they will allow withdrawals to arbitrary addresses. My guess is that if someone were to withdraw large amounts to sketchy websites, it would be frowned upon by PayPal.

I don’t think PayPal offers especially good rates, so I don’t see many people being affected by this.

I get your point, but still, I think it's big difference between custodial wallet and service which doesn't even allow to withdraw and deposit Bitcoins. Offcoursem non-custodial wallet is best to use, but it's different topic.

It's likely. After US, I think they will come to Europe first and Africa and Asia won't be covered soon. But I think it's all about the regulations, it's not that easy to launch such things globall as al we would like.

By third-party wallets, PayPal must be referring to wallets other than PayPal, "to the destination of their choice," as their executive, Jose Fernandez da Ponte, said.

I am also hoping that there will be no discrimination of crypto funds on the basis of where it is coming from, unless there is enough reason to flag it. Currently, my local wallet implements a policy of not allowing deposits and withdrawals involving gambling sites. It's a huge hassle for someone who gambles like me. But then, I guess it's about legal requirements as opposed to wallet preference.

Once they allow withdrawals, they won't have any control over where and which the coins will go. But like you said they may also prevent coins coming from casino since Paypal are known to have not allowed gambling funds. This is like one of the fungibility issues that should have been illuminated when it comes to cryptocurrency but the government found a way still through the bitcoin mining council.

PayPal have a history of freezing accounts which were being used to buy and sell bitcoin peer to peer, and they also have a history of freezing accounts which were buying bitcoin through PayPal's own mechanisms for a variety of unknown reasons. You can do a quick search on Reddit or even PayPal's own support forums to see dozens of users complaining of having their accounts arbitrarily locked, and having both their fiat and their bitcoin funds seized and inaccessible.

Obviously all those risks still exist, but now add on the fact that PayPal will be conducting blockchain analysis to see where your coins have come from and where they are going to. Not only will they seize your bitcoin like other centralized exchanges do, but they will also seize your fiat. A lot of people use PayPal (rightly or wrongly) for daily fiat transactions, sending money to friends and family, etc. If you regularly use PayPal for these things, you should think very hard about whether you want to use them to buy bitcoin, given how "shoot first, ask questions later" their approach is to locking accounts.

Well, once the withdrawal is given the green light and has been confirmed, the funds is already beyond the control of PayPal. It is irreversible. However, every transaction is monitored. The moment they suspect something is against whatever rule they have, they might do something not with the withdrawn funds, which is beyond their control, but your account and the balance it has in the wallet.

Anyway, I don't think the government has something to do with the newly announced Bitcoin Mining Council.