Paxful removes Ethereum (ETH) from their peer-to-peer marketplace as of December 22, 2022

Revenue is nice, but integrity trumps all

Received the following email from Paxful CEO & founder Ray Youssef:

This is Ray, the CEO of Paxful, and I'm writing to you personally as I have made the decision to remove ETH from our marketplace as of December 22 (UTC 12:00). Why?

Revenue is nice, but integrity trumps all.

Let me explain. The biggest problem in the world is economic apartheid. It is the root of all of humanity's pain. I want to see a world where Bitcoin frees billions of people held back by this evil system, especially those unnecessarily harmed living in the Global South. This is why I built Paxful—to achieve this MISSION. It is what truly drives me, it’s from the heart, and this is personal for me.

So, here are the reasons why I am removing ETH from Paxful:

• ETH switched from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Proof-of-work is the innovation that makes Bitcoin the only honest money there is, whereas proof-of-stake has rendered ETH essentially a digital form of fiat.
• ETH is not decentralized. It is controlled by a small group of people and one day you will need permission to use it.
• ETH had some utility in real use cases, such as credit and lending, but it thrives because of tokenization. The tokens that ETH has spawned have been scams that have robbed people of billions. They have stolen valuable momentum away from Bitcoin and cost us years on our mission.

In short, our industry is under attack right now—which means our responsibility to protect our users is greater than ever before. We are not perfect, but we'll always do the right thing, even if it's not popular, and even if it costs us money. The pay off for all humanity will be so great that the billions scammers have stolen via tokens will seem like pennies by comparison.

You have my word as a CEO and as a human being that I will always put purpose before profit. We're really going to do this brothers and sisters.

This is the way.

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