PayPal blocks Bitcoin-parody Super Bowl commercial

A Super Bowl commercial that was released on YouTube and parodied PayPal has been blocked by the payments company.

PayPal's first promotion of video advertising for popular American sporting events has enabled the company to take on the role of "new currency" relative to "old currency."

According to the Wall Street Journal, after Bitcoin supporters were "outraged" by the release of the ad, Shiloh Silverman, head of the film and television production company Silver Park Studio, produced a new version of the video. He maliciously cropped the image of Bitcoin users and replaced "PayPal" with "Bitcoin is newer money".

However, after Silverman posted the video to YouTube, PayPal opposed it and blocked the parody video until Monday.

“Our new currency includes Bitcoin,” a PayPal spokesperson told the WSJ in an email. “So to avoid customer confusion, we asked them to remove the video.”

The payments company also claimed that "parody" commercials was the "sincerest form of flattery" and proved that people liked the concept of its ads.

Since releasing the new ad parodying PayPal, Silverman has also told news sources that:

“I’m not a Bitcoin fanatic , I just like the world it exists in .”

Bitcoin's Friendly Relationship

Although PayPal primarily deals with fiat currencies, the company is not against Bitcoin.

The company also recently invited the CEO of bitcoin company XAPO to join its board of directors and in September 2014 formed partnerships with the three major payment processors in the bitcoin space - BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin.

While the online e-commerce pioneer has not directly integrated bitcoin into its services, PayPal does allow online merchants to accept bitcoin payments through the three companies’ Braintree payment hub.