#CryptoRelatedStocksRallyBroadly 🌋 The "Why" Behind the Hype

If Stripe were to actually pull this off, the landscape wouldn't just change; it would be rewritten. Here is how that "Conquest" looks under the hood:
The Braintree Irony: Stripe acquiring Braintree (which PayPal bought in 2013) would be the ultimate full-circle moment. It would give Stripe access to massive enterprise legacy contracts that have traditionally been hard to flip.
The Venmo Factor: Stripe has always been "business-facing." Buying Venmo gives them a direct-to-consumer heartbeat. It turns Stripe from a "hidden" layer into a household name.
The Settlement Layer: You hit the nail on the head with the crypto convergence. By combining Stripe’s API-first architecture with PayPal’s stablecoin ($PYUSD) infrastructure, they could bypass the SWIFT network entirely for cross-border settlements.
📊 Reality Check: The Hurdles
As much as the "Alpha" is tempting, a deal of this size would face some massive Boss-level challenges:🧠 My Take: Evolution or Conquest?
I lean toward Evolution. PayPal didn't necessarily "fail," but it became a victim of its own scale, slowing down just as the world moved toward the "high-speed rails" you mentioned. Stripe isn't just buying assets; they are buying time—the time it would take to build a 400M+ user network from scratch.