PayPal fears Bitcoin :) PayPal CEO Dan Schulman Disses BTC & Praises Blockchain

[pushups44]

There is truth in the claim of price volatility scaring away certain merchants, but I believe as the industry matures mechanisms will be in place for quick conversion to fiat so that merchants are not hit with the risks. Also, given that this criticism is coming from a centralized entity with a reputation of high fees, we should be skeptical of these comments.

there is no truth to that actually.
you can easily verify this by looking at the growth of the number of merchants that have started accepting bitcoin over the past years and also the total amount of bitcoin that has changed hand among merchants and customers during that time. you can clearly see that there has been a big growth in both which shows that it is not "scaring anybody away" it is just happening slowly because bitcoin adoption is happening slowly.

I agree with you that merchant adoption is growing, especially with the Lightning Network, but that does not contradict what I wrote. Bitcoin's volatility is a concern for some merchants, and insofar as it is, it will play a role in bitcoin's rate of adoption. However, I believe over time the bitcoin price will stabilize.

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[Lizzylove1]

He might be right to some extent, but we can't deny the fact that with the necessary enabling environment by the government, much fund will flow into this market, which will guarantee low volatility unlike what we are seeing now, wherein when just $10b is taken of the crypto market, bitcoin feels the offload. In the future, if bitcoin price becomes relatively stable overtime, there will be no need to converting to fiat. If large population uses bitcoin, fiat will be dished.

[eaLiTy]

This is really interesting. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman disses BTCitcoin for price fluctuation and claims it can't be used as a currency for businesses due to the fact of needing to be converted to fiat after the sale (which takes a fee to convert, thus losing your margin).

If you are sending a million dollars for business purposes what is total amount you have to shell out with other payment solutions and if you compare that with the transaction fees of bitcoin it is just like a drop in the ocean. They can diss what ever they want but eventually people who does international transaction will understand the value of bitcoin and how much they can save in transactions alone.

[bitbunnny]

Well, he isn't completely wrong. Using Bitcoin in business is still very complicated and risky and often tied with many difficulties so I would not say that he is afraid of Bitcoin because of competition but he is quite realistic. Especialy in some countries is hard to use Bitcoins for business because of very strict laws and regulations oposed by government and tax authorities and it's true that at the end you need fiat money. But I hope this will change in the future.

[cellard]

I doubt PayPal fears Bitcoin at all, just like Warren Buffet, people just don't get it. Bitcoin isn't even trying to compete against centralized payment systems, it's a whole different ball bame, when they realize Bitcoin is digital gold it will be too late, everyone that got it will be rich.

If Bitcoin can compete against PayPal in the form of Lightning Network in the future that is just a nice extra, however is not the main point of Bitcoin. This is how things are. And gold is 7.8 trillion, most payment processors are nothing compared to the potential market for Bitcoin. I mean how can't people see Bitcoin is still tiny and it doesn't fucking matter if you get in at $3000 or $300? it's nuts. When we are at $100k well see the first regret suicides.

[magneto]

He's actually not wrong about a lot of businesses accepting bitcoin and quickly converting it into fiat - because bitcoin is after all admittedly volatile, and businesses, apart from a few actual bitcoin enthusiasts, do not want to carry that exchange rate risk by accepting bitcoin is itself instead of going through a third party like Bitpay.

To be honest, this is a concern, but in the future as adoption increases, price stability will come as well. These things go hand in hand and we're already seeing prices being a lot more stable as markets matured from year to year. And it certainly doesn't warrant this level of criticism, as adoption has certainly been on the increase as you say.

I'd be interested to know what his stance on other, non-decentralised, government or privately issued blockchain projects are. He seems to be solely talking about decentralised cryptocurrencies in this segment, which is not surprising given that Paypal I believe has lost at least a fraction of their market share in online payment processing given the emerging popularity of bitcoin in online trades. There is a conflict of interest that doesn't allow him to comment unbiasedly here.