Has PayPal Failed At What Bitcoin Has Achieved?

Published 5 years ago on August 17, 2018

Has PayPal Failed At What Bitcoin Has Achieved?

According to reports out this week, PayPal is under criticism for its alleged failure in actually having an impact in the transformation of money usage worldwide. It seems that on the flipside, what PayPal aimed to achieve, Bitcoin thus far as done better, without really trying.The criticism comes through recent events in Turkey that has led to the crash of the Turkish Lira (Turkey’s FIAT currency). Because of this crash and because of financial uncertainty, PayPal have been forced to block access to the service from customers in Turkey to prevent the circulation of the failing currency. Many people have challenged this decision as the essence of PayPal is that it is supposed to help people in these situations, not block people from using the service all together. As we know on the contrary, many people in Turkey have turned to Bitcoin during this crisis and therefore, people are now starting to argue that this has epitomised PayPal’s failure to empower people, simply put, Bitcoin is doing it better.According to Bitcoinist.com:

“That decision [to block Turkish PayPal users], coming as Turkey introduces economic measures to curb its currency’s rampant devaluation, was the result of PayPal needing ‘necessary approvals’ to serve users in the country, a support agent had previously written on Twitter. ‘We have no choice but to suspend processing payments in your region. We will continue to seek to obtain the necessary approvals to enable us to recommence PayPal services in Turkey in the future,’ the agent explained.”

See more for yourself, here. What’s our take?It’s actually rather shocking that PayPal have decided to take these steps. Of course, PayPal will be back and will be live in Turkey soon enough, but their response to a financial crisis really does seem to be the opposite of what the majority of us would expect. Bitcoin has achieved a consensus that means people know they can turn to it in financial crisis. Okay, the price might be volatile but as a means of storing money to prevent it devaluing under a FIAT crash, it’s the perfect solution. PayPal should be offering this service too. They should be allowing people to use their service to move money away from a landslide if that happens, not blocking them out.Bitcoin has already achieved what PayPal wanted to achieve and this does epitomise it all. PayPal have a lot of work to do if they want to recover from this, it’s damaged their reputation and in the process, boosted many peoples affiliation to Bitcoin. Investment Disclaimer

Robert Johnson

Robert first came across Bitcoin in 2016 during a meetup in Belgium, and has been hooked ever since. With a background in Economics, you can find Robert frequently looking at the Twitter feed of the SEC for any regulatory updates relating to Bitcoin and Crypto in general.