PayPal Just Made it a Cadillac Moment

Matthew Le Merle
4 min readDec 13, 2020

Why the world of blockchain changed the moment they went live.

PAYPAL JUST MADE IT A CADILLAC MOMENT.

How Great Brands Fail

Both of our current presidential candidates grew up at a time when Cadillac was the Rolls Royce of the US auto industry. Everyone in their generation dreamt of the luxury and soft ride of that big rocketship; The Cadillac Calais, deVille, or Fleetwood. If you had one, you had certainly arrived. Or so it seemed to those who were at their peak in the post war years.

Great brands die when they lose their relevance.

More specifically, great brands die when their value propositions are no longer attuned to the needs and wants of their future generation of customers. You can’t sit still with great brands and products and services that are just right but for an aging population. Unfortunately, they are the past, and the future is in the hands of the young and often they want something else.

What The Millennials Want

This complicated chart from two years ago shows what Millennials want to invest in. Unlike baby boomers who just loved their Cadillacs and were into being debt free and investing in ‘high yielding’ savings accounts CD’,s and IRA’s (25 average return of fixed income = 3% so not…

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Matthew Le Merle

Matthew Le Merle is co-founder and Managing Partner of Fifth Era which manages Blockchain Coinvestors, and of Keiretsu Capital