Bitcoin Forum

This is from the inspiration speech by paypal co-founder Peter Thiel on the topic Virtual Money, Privacy, and the Internet
Wednesday, October 20, 1999

“We’re definitely onto something big. The need PayPal answers is monumental. Everyone in the world needs money – to get paid, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology and an inconvenient means of payment. You can run out of it. It wears out. It can get lost or stolen. In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that’s more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection. Of course, what we’re calling ‘convenient’ for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world.

Many of these countries’ governments play fast and loose with their currencies,” the former derivatives trader [referring to Thiel] noted, before continuing, “They use inflation and sometimes wholesale currency devaluations, like we saw in Russia and several Southeast Asian countries last year [referring to the 1998 Russian financial crisis and 1997 Asian financial crisis, to take wealth away from their citizens. Most of the ordinary people there never have an opportunity to open an offshore account or to get their hands on more than a few bills of a stable currency like U.S. dollars. Eventually PayPal will be able to change this. In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure."

Look at the economy and status of paypal in a developing country like India,Inflation is hurting each and every move the government wishes to make and interest rate are made to  skyrocket to contain inflation, thus leading to loss of wealth, poor entreprenurship motivation etc, when it comes to paypal users are not allowed to topup thier paypal wallets any money obtained by any transactions should be credited to the user bank account within 24 hours..

In short a centralized service like paypal is restricted by the local governments

the dream was great, but paypal just was not the tool...BITCOIN IS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9TNiwqxrDA

Paypal serves its place and will continue to operate but I think it's use will dwindle. I also think they will integrate bitcoin somehow if it keep growing like it is doing.

Yeah, the original vision was very bitcoin-like in terms of giving control of money back to the people. But how PayPal played out really shows how much of a fatal flaw any centralization is to that end. This is why things like RealCoin (ie, *anything* that is "backed" by something else) is an asinine idea.

It's kinda funny that so many bitcoiners hate PayPal, yet bitcoin is the realization of PayPal's genesis ethos.

well said, i found this out when i read about the initial days of paypal..now i am getting the feeling what if the paypal mafia was behind satoshi nakamoto..or if they were satoshi nakamoto

Satoshi is Elon Musk!!!
me thinks
 

Interesting. Spot on identification of the problem, but the solution (PayPal) was not visionary enough to provide an alternative to the current system. Enter bitcoin...

I thought he was Iron man

Paypal was great when it started and for many years.  Being able to move money from paypal balance to paypal balance for free was a real advantage and good reason to use it.  However, they succumbed to greed and decided to start charging a fee and a not insignificant percentage for moving money from one account of theirs to another.  In a way, their greed has provided an opening for bitcoin.

Paypal was really good when it first came out. There wasnt as many rules, and you were hardly ever bothered by them.
After using paypal for almost 2 years, their TOS kept changing and it seemed like they started watching everyone like a hawk.
I haven't had any luck recently with with it, and I dont think I will ever use it again. It just seems there's always some problem.

It is not too late for PayPal to realise that dream. They can incorporate bitcoin into their system and charge as little fee as possible. PalyPal is years ahead of any other commercial payment system, they are a force to be reckoned with if they accept bitcoin now.

Paypal is far from a failure.   They revolutionized online payments and made things so much easier for such a long time before BTC was ever created.