By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 23rd, 2024
PayPal’s CEO Dan Schulman explained what reasons they had for taking a decision to leave the widely-discussed Libra Association.
Payments giant PayPal‘s CEO Dan Schulman after some time has finally explained their leaving from Libra Association in a recent interview. While many in the fintech space expected his reasons to be fear of regulatory retaliation, it was more of a matter of strategy than anything else.
In June of this year, about twenty-eight technology and financial heavyweights joined forces to create the Libra Association which is the umbrella body for the launch of Facebook’s Libra token. In the interview, Dan debunked rumors that fear of the United States government agencies was the primary reason for PayPals’ withdrawal from Libra Association.
He said:
“We have an extremely robust relationship with every regulator out there,”
“That wasn’t really what spooked us on it. It was just about, ‘Where do we want to put our attention, and what do we want to do today to advance our mission?’” continued he.
This, of course, indicates that PayPal didn’t want to lose its corporate focus and also that the payments giant may have had something else up its sleeve when it comes to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Dan indicated that they did.
It also points to the fact that Libra had quite a bit of unanticipated work to be executed before seeing the light of day barring regulatory scrutiny which the United States government was ready to implement against payment processors and financial giants that were a part of Libra Association.
Earlier, several U.S. senators Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) had indicated this in a letter to the CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, suggesting further regulatory scrutiny due to their involvement with Libra. While their pullback may not be directly traced to the letter, the letter, of course, indicates the financial services sectors’ cautiousness when dealing with the United States government in any form way, or manner.
Dan also indicated that he held some bitcoins but that also its volatility, as opposed to fiat currencies, was an issue.
He also confirmed what John Rainey who is PayPal’s CFO had indicated in May about the payments giant having its in-house cryptocurrency project. In May, it was said that there are “teams working on blockchain and cryptocurrency”.
This, however, doesn’t mean that Dan is enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. His neutral tone suggests that PayPal will still stick with “more-of-the-same” he indicated this by saying:
“Most people think that blockchain is about efficiency, but the system today is pretty efficient.”
This is, of course, indicative of the current malaise that is sweeping through the blockchain community and the crypto space.