The more I think of it, the more I realize this is the way for them to circumvent the restrictions recently placed on them in the US that prevented them from being able to allow customers to deposit a balance in their PayPal account.
If I'm not mistaken, there was recent legislation which essentially determined that PayPal could not act like a bank and enforce Bank level requirements on their customers without any of the accountability to the bank would be required to live up to and then on the flip side, arbitrarily withhold for longer than a bank would be allowed to or even in some cases completely confiscate account balances without reasonable explanation while then leaning on the loophole that they are not a bank ( a lot to follow I'm sure, but PayPal is a convoluted monster) in this sounds like just another version have exactly what they were doing with PayPal cash balances, and basically skating Buy on a technicality like they always do that it is cryptocurrency which is not regulated federally yet and therefore they would be able to continue their practices.
TL;DR u.s. government determined that PayPal , not being a bank, did not behave responsibly with consumers funds and that since they are not a banking institution or willing to be held to that level of accountability they can no longer have cash balances for us customers, and this is a loophole, considering the recency of these events it just looks like a quick way to continue bad business practices without being held accountable
TL;DR