In the flurry that is stablecoins-o-rama, the discovery* and subsequent confirmation by PayPal that it plans to launch a stablecoin, PayPal Coin, merits attention. Why? First, it has a legacy—albeit now over 20 years old—of being not only a payments rebel but also a cryptography marvel (Confinity). Second, it is not in the crosshairs of regulators or politicians but rather has become a payments infrastructure mainstay in the Web 2.0 world. Third, in order to remain a payments leader for the next 20 years, it has to excel with a Web 3.0 strategy. Hence, it is going to invest heavily to be a beacon of the crypto economy. The competitive heat is on: Ethereum’s market cap surpassed PayPal’s ($366B and $215B respectively) but PayPal is still far ahead on transactions per day with over 40M compared to 1.2M, respectively.

If you’re interested in learning more about the world of stablecoins, please see my Celent report, Mapping the Crypto Galaxy Part 2: Trends in Cryptocurrencies, Stablecoins/CBDCs, and DeFi.

*Steve Moser, developer, made the discovery in the source code of PayPal’s iPhone app.