PayPal finally arrives in the wonderful world of cryptocurrency. To get a taste of this new asset class, the online payment company opts for a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar : THE PayPalUSD. Barely announced, the PYUSD sparked many reactions in the crypto community. According to recent polls, this stablecoin is divisive. Big plan !
Public Applause for PayPal USD
Presses echoed the historic launch of PayPal’s stablecoin mid-afternoon yesterday. Supported by Paxosa crypto company worried by the SEC, the American payment specialist has chosen to deploy the PYUSD on the Ethereum blockchain. Soon, US PayPal customers will be able to take advantage of this bargain.
Obviously, this drew a multitude of reactions from the crypto community.
” This is PayPal’s stablecoin contract:
– is written in a very old version of Solidity
– allows the owner to suspend all transfers
– allows the owner to freeze addresses to prevent actions
– allows the total supply to administrators to be increased at will
Centralized, but at least transparent. »
Besides this pro-crypto IT engineer, other enthusiasts have also shown their support for PayPal’s stablecoin project. Many were endorsing the PYUSD in the recent bitcoin survey on Twitter.
At the time of writing this article, 48.9% of them consider PayPal USD to be “ Good “. While 16.7% and 34.4% voted for “bad” and “ugly” respectively.
Also, we will note the validation of this PayPal stablecoin by Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle.
” It’s incredibly exciting to see such an important company in internet and payments enter the stablecoin space », Reports Quince.
On the side of elected Americans, this migration of TradFi players in the cryptocurrency industry is pushing for faster industry regulation.
” Of the clear regulations and strong protections for consumers are essential to allow stablecoins to reach their full potential “, notes the chairman of the Financial Services Committee of the House of Representatives, Patrick McHenry.
Decentralization is under threat
The PayPal USD did not receive all the praise. Many have spoken about its limits in terms of security and decentralization. ” Sweet and bitter news for the crypto community “, judge Cointelegraph.
” The new stablecoin PayPal USD has an ‘assetProtection’ role which can clear your balance in two transactions (first ‘freeze’, then ‘wipteFrozenAddress’).
In smart contract security, we call this a ‘centralized attack vector’. »
Here the focus is on the power held by PayPal not the users. Indeed, the American giant will be able to use ” controversial functions when needed “.
In other words, PayPal will deploy a stablecoin almost identical to a CBDC. It will be possible for him to make it censorshipor even modify the smart contract at any time.
” I just read the PayPal USD Terms of Service.
– Full KYC
– conservation by Paxos
– linked to your PayPal login
– PayPal can cancel any transaction
– allegedly backed by actual dollars.
All the censorship capabilities of a CBDC, but launched by big tech companies rather than the government. »
Also, the fact that the stablecoin ERC-20 PYUSD is written in Solidity v0.4.24 worries some analysts. Too old for their taste, this version of the Ethereum programming language could know bugs (zero scale, backdoors, etc.). And as a corollary security problems.
Note that the Curve hack was made easy by writes to outdated versions of Vyper.
Nevertheless, we will agree to mention that PayPal’s initiative will contribute to the democratization of cryptocurrencies. Ethereum will be the first to benefit from the launch of PYUSD as the online payment company will integrate around 430 million active accounts into its ecosystem.
Receive a digest of news in the world of cryptocurrencies by subscribing to our new service of daily and weekly so you don’t miss any of the essential Tremplin.io!
