‘Get your money out right now’ – Elon Musk and the PayPal mafia lead ‘crazy’ backlash against shock blunder It’s the ‘best’ thing ever to happen to bitcoin and crypto
PayPal
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The company, after helping spark last year’s huge crypto bull run with support for bitcoin and a handful of other cryptocurrencies, has scrapped a policy change that would have fined users up to $2,500 for spreading what it called “misinformation,” claims that the update had expired “in error.”
The reversal followed a flood of accusations from former management and regulators who labeled the policy “crazy”, “Owellian” and “the best thing that ever happened to the adoption” of bitcoin and crypto.
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Tesla billionaire Elon Musk was instrumental in the founding of PayPal and has said the experience … [+]
“An AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) notice was recently issued in error that included incorrect information,” a PayPal spokesperson said. journalists. “PayPal does not fine people for misinformation, and this language was never intended to be included in our policies. Our teams are working to correct our policy pages. We apologize for the confusion this has caused.”
However, the company’s change of direction only happened after members of the so-called PayPal mafia, former PayPal president David Marcus, founding chief operating officer David Sachs and co-founder Elon Musk, publicly criticized the policy while the bitcoin and crypto community pointed to it as evidence of the need for decentralized, digital payment options.
“It’s hard for me to openly criticize a company I used to love and gave so much to,” Marcus, who now runs the “bitcoin-focused” company Lightspark after failing to get Facebook’s digital currency off the ground, posted to Twitter. “But PayPal’s new AUP goes against everything I believe in. A private company can now decide to take your money if you say something they disagree with. Crazy.”
“Agreed,” Musk black to Marcus, while Sachs, now a venture capitalist and cohost of All In podcast, told PayPal users to “get your money out of PayPal right now.”
The policy was described as “Orwellian” by the Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr. “Paypal reserves the right to take your money if you post a message that Paypal believes is ‘misinformation,'” Carr posted to Twitter. “This is why it is so important that state and federal lawmakers pass laws that prohibit discrimination by technology companies and protect free speech.”
Bitcoin
In China, however, the development of a digital yuan, a so-called central bank digital currency (CBDC), has sparked fears that the government will be able to dictate what people can spend their money on. Governments, including in the US and Europe, are exploring the development of their own digital dollar and digital euro CBDCs.
“PayPal censoring speech and blocking payments is the best thing that has happened to the adoption of crypto payments with stablecoins,” prominent crypto investor Santiago Roel Santos tweeted. “At this rate, web3 adoption will happen more because of the reckless actions of web2 companies.”
Web3 is the idea that a blockchain-based decentralized third-generation version of the Internet will eventually replace the Silicon Valley-centric Web 2.0 dominated by Facebook’s Meta, Google
This month, Musk said he plans to turn Twitter into a so-called “everything app” similar to WeChat, a hugely popular app in China that combines messaging, payment and social media elements.
“Buying Twitter is an accelerator to create X,” Musk said after his renewed deal to take Twitter private. X.com was the name of Musk’s payments company in the early 2000s that eventually became PayPal.
