Reports show that The Hacker News (THN), a highly trusted and renowned cybersecurity news media outlet, had its Paypal accounts closed.
According to a Tweet, Paypal banned the accounts permanently without mentioning a reason why. It was also stated that Paypal said that funds are going to be held for 180 days. After some conversations, Paypal practically offered an explanation in which it stated that “specific reasons for such a decision is proprietary & it is not released.”
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
As soon as the news appeared, it spread on Twitter. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts quickly came to the defense of THN and said that bans were censorship and without a sense. Many Bitcoiners started to attack Paypal and the entire centralized establishment. For instance, cryptographer Matt Odell said that when you cannot turn to anything else, Bitcoin is the solution.
According to Marty Bent, media creator, payment processors are losing their minds. This was a reference to the increase noticed in digital censorship.
Bitcoin started to be lauded. NVK, pseudonymous decentralist, stated that buying, using and spreading Bitcoin will end up causing a huge victory over centralized powers. Then, OpenNode developer Rui Gomes said that this censorship can only accentuate the underlying value proposition of Bitcoin.
The new Paypal ban appeared only days after we saw Patreon banning Jordan Peterson, a prominent political commentator and psychology professor. The reason was pushing ideas that were not in line with the terms of service of the company.
These two bans are underscoring the value of cryptocurrencies. However, the public still did not acknowledge this and are using the traditional systems.
In the event that there will be future bans that will appear, it is a certainty that the use of BTC is going to keep growing. Paypal can end up losing ground.
The reason why Paypal banned THC is only speculation at the moment but on Twitter the speculations are running wild. There are even users that say the ban appeared simply because of the fact that the word “hacker” is used in the domain name.
