Law Decoded: Government sandboxes, test beds and crypto compromises, Oct. 16-23

A line from immortal comic strip Calvin & Hobbes goes "a good compromise leaves everybody mad." When it comes to laws governing crypto, authorities are usually asking for pretty major compromises because they are, at their very best-intentioned, trying to work things out.

Everything regulators touch in crypto develops slower than the industry would necessarily like.

Restricting crypto's technological capacities requires some compromises.

PayPal's crypto payments test out New York's conditional BitLicense and vice versa.

After months of rumors, PayPal formally announced that the platform would be onboarding crypto payments.

PayPal's crypto will be locked up on the platform.

PayPal's crypto platform received the tentative green light from New York's Department of Financial Services, arguably the most important sub-national financial regulator in the world and the issuer of the famed BitLicense.

Just as PayPal is testing out crypto in an extremely limited capacity, the DFS is testing out its new format for testing out firms looking to obtain that coveted license.

While FinCEN has long maintained that crypto businesses need to keep the same sort of client records as banks, actually targeting a mixing operator ups the ante considerably.

Despite the convenience of the action, it's obviously jarring news, especially for anyone running a crypto service that enhances privacy, but more generally for anyone who thinks that maybe not every transaction should be packed with personal information.