PayPal Shenanigans

Based on the shenanigans that PayPal tried to pull over the weekend, we have decided to discontinue our use of the payment service going forward. In case you haven’t heard, PayPal recently updated their Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) to include “misinformation” as an offense they could fine you $2500 for. Yep they really tried to do that.

For anyone that doesn’t believe it (I didn’t until I looked at the email PayPal sent me Friday afternoon. Who reads those things anyway?). Here is the actual language they used before retracting it. I got a screenshot before they took it down…

Luckily there are people that read these things, unlike myself, and alerted the world to these shenanigans.

This action goes way beyond what a financial institution should be doing (or any institution for that matter). Any company that, even briefly, feels like they can exert that much control over your life should be immediately deep sixed. Many people appear to share my thoughts because #deletePaypal is currently trending on Twitter.

Our country was founded on certain principles that have made America the greatest nation on earth. One of these bedrock principles is the ability to speak your mind… without censorship. To have PayPal of all places, think they can somehow be an arbiter of what you can and can’t say online is beyond ridiculous.

What PayPal forgot, and the market is now reminding them, is that there are plenty of alternatives to their payment service. Venmo is actually owned by PayPal so that would be a no-go in my book, but there are others. CashApp and Gab Pay are two that come to mind, but so does our own recently announced feature to send ammo to friends like cash.

Why ammo?

Simple, because ammunition is: Tangible, Valuable AND Useful.

These benefits exceed most other forms of currency, but people don’t really think of ammunition as a medium of exchange or store of value. But it is.

Think about this:

• Ammunition’s value will never reach zero unlike fiat currency. In fact, as inflation hits harder the value of ammo will likely go up.
• It is tangible because you can hold it in your hand unlike digital dollars, cryptocurrency or stocks.
• Lastly, and most importantly, ammo is useful: you can use it to protect yourself unlike the king of tangible currency, gold, which doesn’t have much use other than jewelry and some industrial uses.

Keeping some of your wealth in ammo is a no-brainer in my opinion. Trading it with others like cash is a new concept, yes, but one I think will catch on as people look for dollar alternatives.

There is no doubt in my mind that we’re heading toward a dollar decline and even a collapse, so anything kept in dollars is at risk. This PayPal situation give us all one more reason to reassess the way we spend and think about money.

For us personally and for the business, we’d rather use an alternative then worry that they’ll freeze our funds for some perceived “thought crime” in the future.