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Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator(s) of Bitcoin once stated its vision was to “create a global currency that was independent of interference by cartels of banks and governments that were debasing their currencies.”
Actually, this statement is from Luke Nosek, one of the co-founders of Paypal. Luke is describing the original vision for Paypal during a panel at the World Economic Forum entitled Can Digital Currencies Strengthen Trust in a Chaotic World? To paraphrase Luke’s own words, although Paypal has achieved great innovation, it has fallen short of its original vision. That is, to create a global currency independent of interference by sovereign states or central banks.
Luke also indicates that by the urging of early investors, Paypal’s creators were never able to fully realize their goal of creating a truly decentralized cryptocurrency. Paypal settled for centralization, which required a huge compliance machine upon a maze of international money transmission laws.
Thus Paypal’s promise was beset by the phenomenon it initially hoped to avoid: Paypal being disrupted by governments because of inability to follow international money laws, and Paypal blocking its own users for the sake of further cooperation with its international networks. Paypal has played this game well, and has built an innovative payments network…
