Uniswap: talks with PayPal, Robinhood and Stripe?

During the recent EthCC conference in Paris, Ashleigh Schap of Uniswap stated that they are in talks with PayPal, Robinhood and Stripe.

However, these statements became the subject of a mystery. 

Shortly after the end of her speech, a video of it was published on YouTube. However, the video was later removed, because, as the inventor of the Uniswap protocol, Hayden Adams, said, “it could be interpreted to suggest we have relationships that we don’t”. 

https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1420482163791835141

However, the video remains available on IPFS for those who want to watch it anyway. 

The goal Uniswap is trying to achieve is to expand into the consumer credit sector, so much so that Schap said the team is currently already in talks with some well-known fintech companies to try and provide decentralized finance services to the mainstream as well. 

He said:

“We’re trying to put Uniswap and the rest of DeFi right there in those applications so that we can bring the dream of open, 100% uptime liquidity to the whole world. PayPal wants to talk to us, E*Trade wants to talk to us, Stripe wants to talk to us”.

In fact, these statements are insufficient to claim that the Uniswap team is actually talking to PayPal, E*Trade (i.e. Robinhood) and Stripe, and Adams was right to clarify that no partnership or collaboration is in place. However, a dialogue between these entities is possible, if not plausible, so some talks may indeed have taken place. 

During the EthCC, Schap, who is in charge of Uniswap’s growth, also explicitly stated that they are seeking partnerships with consumer finance companies, particularly through intermediary companies such as Fireblocks, Paxos and Talos. Paxos is the very platform that PayPal is using to offer its cryptocurrency buying and selling services.

According to another anonymous source, the team is indeed talking to all of them, but for now it is only speculation, i.e. nothing concrete yet. 

However, if companies that deal with traditional financial services, particularly those related to lending, would also like to offer services related to decentralized finance, Uniswap would absolutely be the number one option to consider, given its trading volumes. So although these hypotheses are not yet concrete, they do not appear to be at all absurd.