Coinbase adds support for PayPal’s stablecoin PYUSD

On August 31 at 12:00 (Kyiv/MSK), the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase провела листинг «stablecoin» PYUSD from PayPal.

“As soon as a sufficient amount of the asset is in place, trading for our PYUSD/USD pairs will begin in stages. Support for the stablecoin may be restricted in some jurisdictions,” said representatives of the exchange.

The PayPal product is marked ‘experimental’, a tag attached to new coins or tokens with low trading volume.

The stablecoin is supported by the standard Coinbase Exchange platform and the Advanced Trade venue. In the initial stages, makers will not be charged fees; takers will pay 0.1%.

On August 7, PayPal announced the launch of a USD-backed stablecoin on the Ethereum network. The issuer of the coin is the infrastructure blockchain company Paxos.

The asset has sparked a mixed reaction among cryptocurrency community members. Some argued that PYUSD would foster broad adoption of digital assets, while others pointed to centralisation risks.

Analysts at Bank of America noted that the launch of the stablecoin would improve payment efficiency and customer service, but the deployment of the asset is unlikely to be widespread.

According to analysts at Nansen, more than 90% of PYUSD supply remains on the Paxos balance sheet. Only 7% of the coin’s supply is held in user wallets connected to Kraken, Gate.io and Crypto.com exchanges.

U.S. Representative Maxine Waters выразила deep concern about PayPal’s stablecoin launch, and noted the lack of a regulatory framework for such assets.

Earlier JPMorgan analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou stated that PYUSD could benefit Ethereum by increasing the total value of assets locked in the network.