HomeBusinessEx-CEO of PayPal has an opinion on everything from crypto to Cobol

Ex-CEO of PayPal has an opinion on everything from crypto to Cobol

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Former Intuit CEO Bill Harris was one of the early fintech leaders, perhaps before fintech existed. He was also briefly CEO of PayPal around the turn of the millennium.

Today he runs the Miami-based wealth management firm Evergreen Wealth Corp. He also has a lot to say about innovations in payments and advances that are taking shape in that area. Payments Dive sat down with Harris earlier this month for an interview about digital payments, crypto and what’s driving the world of fintech in the era leading to the new Trump administration.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

PAYMENT DIVE: What is your opinion on stablecoins?

BILL HARRIS: That is fundamentally the most important of the potential crypto developments. Because when we talk about crypto as an investment, things like Bitcoin would bring their own volatility into play. If you’re looking for something to fund a payment network, especially a payment network where people in the real world operate in a fiat currency, and are really looking for crypto as a faster and cheaper mechanism for moving money , then doing it in fiat currency on a blockchain makes more sense if you’re trying to build a payment network. So I think stablecoin has a big future, whether private or issued by central banks.

Do you think the Trump administration will pursue a central bank digital currency?

On the one hand, I think there will be less support for the financial regulatory apparatus [there will be] an attempt to reduce regulation. Of course, much of the regulation on the federal side of the crypto world is essentially aimed at making it harder for unregulated crypto exchanges, etc. to thrive. The other side of it though is that I would bet that the deregulation push goes even further than that, and rather than forcing or allowing the central bank in this country to issue its own stablecoin, I think this really offers an opening for the economy. to private stablecoin issuers. My guess is that this privately issued stablecoin denominated in US currency will probably have a day in the sun.

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What about cryptocurrencies?

As a payment network, as long as most of the world operates on a fiat basis, it seems unlikely that a cryptocurrency – and I’m not saying blockchain, I’m not saying stablecoin – will simply become the basis for a major payments network. because it means that for domestic translations you make two conversions, one to the cryptocurrency and one back again. And even for cross-border activities, you do two conversions, instead of one, which would be just the sender’s fiat and the recipient’s fiat. So in both cases, a separately denominated currency for a payment network seems at best not an advantage and possibly also a disadvantage.

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