After some fumbling with other ideas, Thiel and Levchin came up with PayPal, which would create “a new Internet currency to replace the U.S. dollar.” Thiel pitched the idea as fulfilling his anti-government dream of a global market that protects the welfare of the public by empowering them as consumers: “What we’re calling ‘convenient’ for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world. Many of these countries’ governments play fast and loose with their currencies. . . . Most of the ordinary people there never have an opportunity to open an offshore account or to get their hands on more than a few bills of a stable currency like U.S. dollars.” But there was that other thing, too, the chance to make a fortune. If you happened to create and own a new digital currency, you could collect a cut from each online transaction. You would become the middleman of e-commerce, commerce, as David Shaw and Jeff Bezos had sketched out, without incurring a retailer’s burden of keeping track of orders, maintaining warehouses, and making deliveries.