The Hacker News (THN), a cybersecurity news resource, has become the latest notable PayPal user to have all its accounts frozen without notice. The company alleged that PayPal acted without mentioning any reason and went on to hold funds in these accounts illegally for 180 days.

In a series of December 28 tweets, officials announced that money from all its corporate accounts with the global money transmitter was no longer available. THN described that situation as ‘frustrating’ and accused PayPal of acting without offering valid reasons for their drastic bans. The money transmitter has regularly initiated funds blocking against corporate clients in the past including those in the cryptocurrency industry without explanations.

Such blocks are a part of the service’s terms of use, that feature the caution that users can be frozen from their accounts without the company having to explain.

That’s so much frustrating.@PayPal has permanently banned all of our accounts without mentioning any reason and hold wallet funds wrongly for 180 days. Upon asking, @AskPayPal also refused to share any details. — The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) December 29, 2018

Community Endorses Bitcoin as a Reliable Alternative

After The Hacker News made the banning news public, Twitter commentators almost immediately pointed the company in the direction of using Bitcoin as a reliable alternative. This latest event occurs amid a constantly changing mood to centralized payment service providers among the larger tech circles.

During the same day, TIME Magazine had published a detailed pro-Bitcoin article primarily focusing on its use as a circumventive method. The article majorly highlighted PayPal’s Venmo as an example of undesirable middlemen who can greatly surveil, censor, and profit from customers.

The backlash on centralized global payment services has spread beyond PayPal in recent months. Starting from August and on many other occasions since, Patreon.com, a crowdfunding platform, blocked several high-profile users and gave unsatisfactory reasons for doing so.

Other open source alternatives have also targeted centralization within cryptocurrency. For example, BTCPay rapidly took custom away from high-profile industry names like Coinbase and BitPay, which have also faced several controversies of their own. So far, PayPal has not commented about the THN allegations.



