- Paypal to cease Erik’s, popular domain registrars, account
- The misinformation about Erik’s Masterbuck is the center of the Debate
- Both companies have publicly announced the ongoing debate
Paypal’s Side of Story
PayPal, Hunter Biden, Bloomberg News, and several Avengers were targeted in a series of unhinged open letters from Epik after PayPal terminated its account.
The domain registrar is home to Gab and other far-right websites and formerly hosted 8chan. It also hosts the domain of the former website of the violent far-right Proud Boys, which was recently spoofed in emails threatening Democratic voters.
Epik claimed it was cut off due to “anti-conservative bias.” PayPal said it had nothing to do with political ideology but was instead due to financial risk issues.
“PayPal has sophisticated risk controls in place to alert our teams to potentially violative activity occurring on our platforms,” said a PayPal spokesperson. “The company independently reviews each matter and bases its decisions on the management of risk and compliance with our long-standing User Agreement.”
The source said that the problem lies with Epik’s digital currency. The domain registrar runs its own “alternative currency” called Masterbucks. This can be used to purchase products by Epik or converted into US dollars.
According to the source, Epik has not gone through the appropriate legal steps to run Masterbucks. Also, Epik was encouraging tax evasion. An archived version of the Masterbucks page promotes its “tax advantages.”
References to “tax advantages” do not appear on the current version of Epik’s Masterbucks website.
Epik was informed of these issues over a month ago by PayPal, according to the source. The payment processor attempted to work with Epik to fix the situation. This was before terminating the domain registrar’s PayPal account.
Epik’s Side of the Story
Earlier this week, Epik publicly aired its disputes with PayPal on its blog. The company also uploaded three open letters to its website.
According to one letter, penned by Epik’s SVP of strategy and communications, Robert Davis, PayPal inquired about offshore accounts, money transmission licenses, and “other queries related to cross‐border activities and law enforcement.”
“[The questions] were absolutely absurd, and well outside of any knowledge or experience we have as a domain registrar,” said Davis.
The letters go on to accuse PayPal of closing Epik’s accounts for political reasons and make no mention of Masterbucks.
“It would appear that in a direct effort to silence conservative voices, PayPal has terminated our payment services ‐ just two weeks before a Presidential election,” reads a second open letter.
Two of the three Epik open letters are addressed to PayPal, while the third is directed to a reporter. It claims the reporter reached out to Epik CEO Rob Monster for a story involving domains registered with the company.
It’s unclear what domains they may have inquired about.
