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On December 5, 2024, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced the appointment of former PayPal COO David Sacks as the White House "White House A.I. & Crypto Czar." This move signals a major shift in U.S. policy on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.

Despite advances in payment effectiveness and customer care, analysts Alkesh Shah and Andrew Moss from Bank of America think that PayPal USD (PYUSD) won't be widely adopted anytime soon. They wrote, "Over the longer term, we expect PYUSD to experience additional adoption headwinds as competition from central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and yield-bearing stablecoins increases."

The recent debut of PayPal's stablecoin, PYUSD, has drawn concern from Congresswoman Maxine Waters. She criticized PayPal's entry into the cryptocurrency market without a defined federal regulatory structure. Highlighting PayPal's vast clientele, which outnumbers the combined accounts of major banks, Waters stressed the pivotal role of federal oversight in crypto dealings: "As I’ve said for more than a year, without legislation on the books that establishes clear and strong consumer protections at the Federal level, consumers are at greater risk of harm at the hands of bad actors."

The largest copycat token was launched shortly after the news and managed to amass a trading volume of $2.6 million within just eight hours, experiencing an astonishing surge of 12,000%. However, its price has since significantly dropped. Another noteworthy token, going by the name PepeYieldUnibotSatoshiDoge, also exhibited remarkable growth of 3,000%. Most of these fake PYUSD tokens are probably created as "honeypots."

The cryptocurrency wallet Phantom has surpassed the global electronic payment system PayPal in the ranking of free financial apps on Google Play.

MetaMask Portfolio now lets users cash out crypto to fiat currencies like USD, EUR, and GBP. Users can quickly convert crypto to fiat, sending it directly to preferred destinations like bank accounts or PayPal. Instead of relying on one provider, MetaMask aggregates multiple vetted providers, presenting real-time conversion options. Currently, this feature supports ETH on Ethereum Mainnet in the US, UK, and parts of Europe. Expansion plans include more regions and layer 2 network gas tokens.

PayPal suspends crypto buying services in the UK Starting October 1, 2023, PayPal will no longer support cryptocurrency purchases for it's users from the United Kingdom. This action is consistent with the company's obligation to comply with local financial legislation. While the measure is planned to last until the start of 2024, PayPal remains hopeful about restoring the service. During the suspension, users are free to either hold their existing cryptocurrencies without any associated fees or sell them if they choose.

Facing increased competition from conventional financial giants like PayPal Holdings Inc., Circle is taking strategic measures. To counter this threat and counterbalance the diminishing market share of its USD Coin stablecoin, Circle is expecting leveraging a substantial cash reserve surpassing $1 billion. The circulating supply of Circle’s USD Coin has experienced a decline, shrinking from $45 billion to around $26 billion since the start of this year.

Tether CTO: "The launch of PayPal stablecoin doesn’t impact Tether as the firm does not serve U.S. users. If PYUSD launches in international markets, it could have a positive impact on the crypto industry and potentially erode revenues for payment giants like MasterCard and Visa." Co-founder of zkLend: "PayPal will indeed bolster the perception and acceptance of cryptocurrencies, but it can lead to a diminished market share for decentralized stablecoins, threatening the very principles of decentralization that underpin the crypto space." Analysts at JPMorgan: "This could boost Ethereum activity and enhance Ethereum’s network utility as a stablecoin/DeFi platform. PYUSD could fill the void left by the $20 billion shrinkage of Binance's BUSD stablecoin, which was forced to shut down by U.S. regulators earlier this year." Co-founder of Sei Network: "The gas fees of using PYUSD will be ridiculous, which will disincentivize its usage. To help make the user experience better, PayPal will either need to subsidize transaction costs or will need to help support PYUSD on other networks with cheaper gas fees." It's worth noting that PayPal currently serves 435 million customers globally.

Partnering with Paxos Trust, financial giant PayPal has unveiled PayPal USD (PYUSD), focusing on swift and budget-friendly payments. With backing from dollar deposits, short-term government securities, and similar cash equivalents, PayPal's CEO, Dan Schulman, envisions the stablecoin bolstering the company's foothold in the digital currency space: "The vision over time is that this becomes a part of the overall payments infrastructure."