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PayPal this month said it was launching PayPal USD, a crypto
token pegged to the US dollar, making it the second major global company to
launch a stablecoin after Facebook, now Meta Platforms, unveiled Libra in June
2019.
The move, which comes as PayPal transitions to a new CEO
announced last week, seems risky after Facebook's stablecoin was crushed by
political opposition, and as regulators home in on the crypto sector following
several meltdowns.
But PayPal is in a stronger position than Facebook, said former
officials, executives and analysts. Policymakers are more familiar with
stablecoins, crypto tokens typically pegged to a fiat currency, than they were
in 2019. A push to create federal stablecoin regulations has also helped boost
their legitimacy in the eyes of lawmakers.
"The world has changed dramatically since Facebook's
Libra project. There was no familiarity with stablecoins whatsoever," said
Christopher Giancarlo, former chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading
Commission.
"Since then the administration, Congress and the
Federal Reserve have had time to get their minds around stablecoins and
stablecoin regulation and there has been very extensive public relations by the
industry, including a lot of lobbying.”
In contrast to Facebook, a social media giant that had been
under sustained scrutiny over privacy issues and Russian election interference,
PayPal is an established financial operator in Washington. It spent $1.13
million (nearly Rs. 9.40 crore) on federal lobbying last year, according to
OpenSecrets, and has been lobbying on cryptocurrencies for several years,
records show.
"From a policy perspective, there is a seismic
difference between Facebook's Libra and PayPal's stablecoin," said Isaac
Boltansky, director of policy research for brokerage BTIG.
"There is still a wall between banking and commerce, so
knowing that PayPal is very clearly on one side of that wall should assuage
lawmakers."
PayPal USD will be issued by digital trust company Paxos
Trust, backed by dollar deposits and US Treasuries, and subject to oversight by
the New York State Department of Financial Services.
PayPal launched a stablecoin because it sees itself as a
leader in payments innovation, said one person familiar with the plan, and CEO
Dan Schulman has said he envisages it will eventually be used for payments. But
PayPal expects the stablecoin will mostly be used by US customers to buy and
sell other crypto tokens on its platform, the source said.
Dan Dolev, a senior analyst at Mizuho, said PayPal USD is
not a game-changer for PayPal investors. "It's positive noise," he
added.
Grand ambitions
To be sure, some policymakers have concerns. Maxine Waters,
the top Democrat on the House Financial Services committee, expressed alarm
that PayPal is launching a stablecoin without federal oversight to protect
consumers and financial stability. But mostly the reaction in Washington has
been muted.
When Facebook unveiled Libra, a stablecoin whose operations
were based in Switzerland and which was pegged to a basket of currencies,
executives made no secret of their ambitions. They said they wanted to
revolutionize the global financial system.
The project ran in to fierce opposition from policymakers
alarmed that Libra could give Facebook too much control over the money system,
and infringe on users' privacy. Caught by surprise, regulators were confused
about who should oversee stablecoins.
Facebook rebranded Libra, scaled it back and moved the
project to the United States, in a bid to win US regulatory approval.
According to one former official with direct knowledge of
the matter, the decision on approving Libra coincided with the transition to
President Joe Biden's administration in January 2021. While the Fed had been
working on the issue for some time, the decision ultimately fell to the new
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She wanted time to fully analyze the issues,
this person said.
Tired of waiting, Facebook sold the venture in January 2022.
The White House and the Fed declined to comment. A Treasury
spokesperson noted that Yellen has "repeatedly called on Congress to
create a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins."
The Treasury has studied stablecoins over the past two
years. After TerraUSD collapsed last year, Yellen said stablecoins did not pose
systemic risks. Since then, fears that stablecoins could supplant traditional
money have subsided, and the Treasury and Congress have broadly agreed that
prudential regulators should oversee them.
"There's been an awful lot of work done ... to understand
what the proportional risk of these things is," said Jack Fletcher, head
of policy and government relations at blockchain company R3.
The Fed this month outlined the process for state banks to
transact in stablecoins, while the House Financial Services committee last
month advanced a bill giving the Fed more power to oversee stablecoins while
preserving state regulators' authority.
The committee's Republican chair, Patrick McHenry, said in a
statement on PayPal USD that Congress should move fast to pass that bill,
"enabling stablecoins to achieve their full potential." © Reuters