[The_Colonel]

> What makes it so huge in your opinion?

Whatsapp has 2 billion users, PayPal and Venmo probably only small fraction of that.

On Whatsapp you already have your friends in the list, on PayPal I personally have nobody. It's an additional hurdle, I've never actually sent money to friend/family through PayPal.

[thehappypm]

Sure, but is this any more interesting than a partnership where WhatsApp lets people PayPal money to other WhatsApp users?

[fragmede]

From a individual perspective, if you are in the US and all of your friends are in the US and are able to get PayPal accounts, and you don't personally use WhatsApp and see it as just another messaging service, the practical answer to your question, for you, personally, is no.

However, thinking of this only in terms of this this will affect you is short-sighted, and apes other hot takes that went down in Internet history (HN on DropBox, /. on the iPod). The broader context for this (as discussed in other threads here) is what makes it interesting. Similarly, from a product POV, Twitter doesn't look like much - it's the users that are on there that makes it interesting.

[thehappypm]

You’re missing my point. PayPal doesn’t use crypto and it’s easy to use to send money around. WhatsApp, just like PayPal, requires a user to onboard. What makes PayPal complex is the international law around sending money, not the tech stack.

[fragmede]

Looking at cryptocurrency as just the tech stack is an incomplete view of the system. For better or worse, using a cryptocurrency is also a mechanism to sidestep international law. (For now. Regulators will catch up with Facebook sooner or later.)