PayPal’s senior vice president for blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies, stated the business has launched an advisory board to assist crypto-related goods.
Peter Briger Jr., co-CEO of Fortress Investment Group; Chris Brummer, a Georgetown Law professor; Shafi Goldwasser, director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing; Timothy Massad, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability; Neha Narula, director of the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative; and Antoinette Schoar, a finance professor are among the six members.
PayPal announced on Tuesday that six new members have been added to its Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies advisory council, which will benefit the company’s existing and future products, as well as its goal of establishing a more inclusive digital financial ecosystem.
The PayPal initiative will include Fortress Investment Group co-CEO Peter Briger, Georgetown University Law Center professor Chris Brummer, Weizmann Institute of Science professor Shafi Goldwasser, former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Timothy Massad, MIT Sloan School of Management finance professor Antoinette Schoar, and MIT Digital Currency Initiative director Neha Narula.
“We believe it is crucial to engage with the world’s best leaders to better understand the industry’s most compelling opportunities and complex challenges,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s senior vice president and general manager for blockchain, crypto, and digital currencies.
From a commercial or regulatory standpoint, all six advisers have extensive experience in the crypto and blockchain industry. Briger is said to have advised Softbank Group founder Masayoshi Son to invest millions of dollars in Bitcoin (BTC) prior to the 2017 bull market. Long before cryptography, Goldwasser was part of a group of MIT researchers who proposed zero-knowledge proof as an encryption system.
Narula was in charge of an initiative to help the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston establish a digital currency focused on scaling for consumer use while at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative. Before President Joe Biden formally nominated Rostin Behnam, Brummer was rumored to be a candidate for CFTC chair. Massad, who was the CFTC chair from 2014 to 2017, suggested after stepping down that regulators should authorize a BTC-focused exchange-traded fund.
It’s unclear if the advisory group’s goal is to help PayPal grow its crypto and blockchain efforts. In October 2020, the payments app announced that clients in the United States would be able to buy cryptocurrencies using the platform, eventually expanding this to include crypto purchases at millions of its global merchants. PayPal Coin, the company’s own stablecoin, is said to be in the works.
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