It's not just that Paypal is established; it's also that Paypal has put millions of dollars into its security program. Most startups haven't even seen the amount of money Paypal spends on security in combined revenue and investment.

I trust my banks with all my money. That doesn't mean it's safe to trust any company with my money, simply because banks manage to do it. I don't trust arbitrary banks, either.

Yes, I agree.

I do think that a lot of Hacker News contributors have blinders on, wherein they devalue the work a big, established service has done, and compare smaller, less-established companies favorably to the same, because they have this narrative of young, smart developers "disrupting" old and established businesses. Its useful to remember that sometimes those big, old businesses are not actually brittle and incompetent, and may actually know more than you think. Don't fall into Dunning-Kruger.

I cannot count the number of times I have heard someone question why I couldn't do something when Google seemed perfectly capable of it. Do I look like I have a couple datacenters and an elite math squad in my pants?