On August 7, 2023, PayPal announced that they were launching PYUSD. In five years, we will look back at this exact moment and realize this was the beginning of the turn in history. Why do I say that?
I’ve called this phenomenon the bad habit of building “more crypto for crypto” elsewhere, but up until this point in time, it is largely what defined the growth and evolution of the industry. This, of course, was true of previous stablecoins, but here is the important difference: that stablecoin now can become a PayPal balance. It can be easily cashed out through traditional rails. It can be kept as the stablecoin itself, knowing others can use these off-ramps. Liquidity increases value, and options increase value.