今年6月，當Facebook推出加密貨幣Libra的宏大計劃時，共有28家公司簽署協議成為Libra協會成員，其中包括PayPal、Visa、萬事達卡及Coinbase等知名企業。協會創立的初衷是為Libra項目的建設與運營提供幫助。

今年10月，PayPal成為Libra協會成員中首家宣布退出的企業，但并未說明其退出的具體原因，僅表示其決定“放棄進一步參與Libra協會，將繼續聚焦主業，為實現普惠金融、服務更多民眾而不懈努力。”

最近，PayPal的首席執行官丹·舒爾曼造訪《財富》雜志編輯部，并與數名記者、編輯舉行了會談。我們談天說地，無所不聊，甚至連舒爾曼早起練武術、靜息心率48下這種事情都沒有落下。（作為比較，靠咖啡續命的我靜息心率是71下。）

但我問的最多的還是PayPal與Libra的關系，以及PayPal在加密貨幣領域里的進展。以下為對話實錄。

《財富》：為什么決定退出Libra協會？

丹·舒爾曼：大衛·馬庫斯（Facebook的Libra項目主管）剛來找我們時談了很多Libra在普惠金融領域的作用，我們很感興趣。我們一直在探索能夠提升效率的下一代技術，比如區塊鏈技術。你知道，我們的求知欲很強，當然希望對Libra有更多的了解。然而，隨著對其認識的不斷加深，我們發現Libra還有很多工作有待完成，我們也有很多計劃中與Libra項目無關的工作要做。所以我們當時就說：“與其把所有的資源都投入到Libra項目里，我們更應該關注自身的發展方向，這樣才能夠更快地推進普惠金融。”

跟兩夫妻吵得不可開交鬧離婚不一樣，Libra將會在一條我們感興趣的道路上前行，而我們會以旁觀者的身份去觀察他們的進展，以后說不定也會有某種形式的合作。衷心祝愿他們一切都好。

是因為擔心監管審查么？

監管與合規是我們的立足之本。我們與監管機構的關系都極為緊密，他們也極為信任我們。所以我們關注的倒不是監管，而是“把注意力放在哪？需要做些什么才能夠實現目標？”等他們想明白了，再看情況。

今年早些時候，PayPal的首席財務官約翰·雷尼表示，公司有團隊正在開展與區塊鏈與加密貨幣相關的工作。可以分享一些他們的工作情況么？

有些可以，但有些東西因為涉及到競爭，還得保密。

會跟Libra有競爭么？

不一定。只是競爭優勢問題。比如說，你可能會問有關下一個產品或下一筆收購的問題。這兩個問題我可能都無法回答。

我們認為區塊鏈前景是非常光明的。對我們也很有吸引力，但需要它為我們帶來些不一樣的東西。很多人覺得區塊鏈的價值在于效率，但現有體系效率其實已經很高。雖然有時還需要中間商，但體系本身的效率并無問題。我們認為區塊鏈的很多優勢源于其“數字身份”的特性。

比如，數字身份的應用，而不一定是能夠降低已經沒有壓縮空間的成本。順便說一下，如果區塊鏈真能夠降低成本，我們都會支持它。

在加密貨幣方面，因為商家利潤很薄，而加密貨幣的價格波動又很大，所以現在對它還沒有太多需求。還有就是要能夠實現加密貨幣與法幣的快速兌換，但兌換也要收費，這樣降下來的成本也都被轉換費用吃掉。只有加密貨幣的幣值穩定，才有可能為廣大網絡商家所接受，這里的“商家”可不是暗網上的那批不法分子，而是正經的網絡商家。

我不是說加密貨幣這個主意沒有意義，可以看到很多人都在交易加密貨幣。現在的加密貨幣更像是商品而不是貨幣。但是我們也可以看到，與許多國家和地區的貨幣相比，加密貨幣的表現更為穩定。

你自己持有虛擬貨幣么？

有的，比特幣。

只有比特幣么？

是的。

（財富中文網）

譯者：梁宇

審校：夏林

When Facebook’s ambitious cryptocurrency project Libra launched in June, a total of 28 companies signed on to be part of The Libra Association. The consortium of companies, including PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and Coinbase, would help build and operate services around the project.

In October, PayPal became the first company to walk away from The Libra Association without citing a specific reason, only that it decided “to forgo further participation in the Libra Association at this time and to continue to focus on advancing our existing mission and business priorities as we strive to democratize access to financial services for underserved populations.”

Last week, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman stopped by Fortune’s offices to meet with several reporters and editors. We spoke about a wide variety of subjects — so wide, in fact, that I learned he does martial arts in the morning and his resting heart rate is 48 beats per minute. (Compare that with mine, which is a coffee-fueled 71.)

But my questions focused on PayPal’s relationship with Libra and the company’s own work in the cryptocurrency realm. Here’s what Schulman said.

FORTUNE: Why did you decide to withdraw from The Libra Association?

Dan Schulman: When David Marcus [Facebook’s head of Libra] came to talk to us about Libra initially, he framed it in ways that were appealing to us about financial inclusion. We’re always exploring the next generation of technologies — like blockchain infrastructure to do things more efficiently. And you know, we’d like to learn more about it. All of us were interested in learning more. As we learned more about [Libra] and saw the amount of things that were still left to do and the amount of things we still had to do on our own roadmap outside of Libra, we said, “You know, we think if we focus on our own roadmap, we’d be able to advance financial inclusion faster than if we put all these resources against Libra.”

It wasn’t an acrimonious divorce or anything like that. It’s just that they will start going down a road that we’re very interested in looking at and monitoring, and maybe later, there are ways we can work together. I wish them the best of luck on it.

Was it because you were spooked by the regulatory scrutiny?

Regulatory and compliance, for us, is foundational. But we have an extremely robust relationship with every regulator out there. We are extremely trusted on that. That wasn’t really what spooked us on it. It was just about, “Where do we want to put our attention, and what do we want to do today to advance our mission?” Once they start figuring things out, we’ll take another look at where they are.

Earlier this year, PayPal’s CFO John Rainey said the company had teams working on blockchain and cryptocurrency. Can you share a little more about what they’re working on?

Yes and no. Some of this is competitive, and we don’t really want to …

Is it competitive with Libra?

No, it’s not necessarily competitive with Libra. It’s just a competitive advantage. Like, you might ask what’s our next product that’s coming out or what’s our next acquisition. I probably can’t tell you about those either.

We think there’s a lot of promise to blockchain technology. It’s intriguing to us, but it really needs to do something that the traditional rails can’t do. Most people think that blockchain is about efficiency, but the system today is pretty efficient. There are middlemen sometimes in between, but the rails of it are pretty efficient. So we think a lot of the neat stuff that can happen on blockchain is around identity, for example.

It’s about the applications on top of it, not necessarily using it to lower the cost by one-eighth of one eighth of a fraction. By the way, if it does turn out to be a lower-cost infrastructure, all of us will move to it.

On the crypto side, it’s still very volatile, and therefore, we don’t have much demand for it by merchants because merchants operate on very small margins. And what they have to do is immediately turn it into fiat, and there’s a fee for turning it into fiat, so any advantage in cost is typically eaten up by that conversion fee. Until it becomes less volatile, it won’t be a currency that is widely accepted by merchants on the web — not the dark web, but the web.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t think crypto is an interesting idea and that people are trading it quite a bit. It’s more commodity-like than it is cash-like right now. But you can think of use cases in different countries and different places where it can be more stable than the alternatives.

Do you personally own any cryptocurrencies?

Yes. Bitcoin.

Only Bitcoin?

Only. Yes.