PayPal has a big plan: become the central bank of digital currencies just as commercial banks are to physical fiat currencies. The company boss, Dan Schulman, laid out this vision during the company’s investor day. Simply, PayPal could become a vehicle to help nations manage and distribute digital money. That seems scary because we have American Google search, American Facebook social, and now loading American PayPal quasi central bank. Call it absolute dominance of the digital age (outside China) if that becomes a reality.
“You think about how many [digital wallets] we’re going to have in the next two, three or five years, and we’re a perfect complement to central banks and governments to distribute those digitized forms of currency,” Schulman said.
Schulman also revealed that PayPal is looking into smart contracts and tokenizations of other non-crypto assets.
“This is a once in a multi-decade opportunity where the fundamental rails of the system are going to be redefined and we have a chance to help shape that,” Schulman said.
Meanwhile, integration of crypto has brought growth to PayPal: “PayPal customers that use its crypto services have a 12% increase in weekly transactions on the platform. This is in part because more than 40% of the U.S. PayPal customers who use crypto return to complete more than two additional transactions, the company said”.
With all these redesigns, it is looking increasingly strange on Nigeria’s playbook to ban Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Which world do we want to exist in right there in Nigeria? CBN needs to reverse this decision before our young people become mere spectators in the future of commerce.
Yes, allow them to take risks – and rise or fail, and learn from the process, while doing your job to mute any paralysis, making sure mistakes do not become an economic avalanche and shock. This outright ban of crypto will hurt Nigeria’s competitiveness in future commerce. Period.
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Some governments are not seeing beyond their noses.