101–110 of 132 posts
Also more ways for a huge American company to mess with my life if anyone human, bot or algorithm working there has a bad day at work. (if anyone doesn't catch my drift here, losing access to your mail account happens, getting it fixed most likely involves either knowing a person working with said company and/or hitting the front page of HN or another watering hole.)
Cryptocurrency mentioned. Blockchain mentioned. I really should've bought a card for this buzzword bingo. Is this just PR or are they genuinely so clueless? If the former I wonder if they missed the shift this year where cryptocoins stopped being the coolest kid in the town anymore. If a centralized company wants to roll out electronic payments through its services it can just, you know, do that. They don't need bloc…
> If a centralized company wants to roll out electronic payments through its services it can just, you know, do that. Not it can't. There's a world outside of the US where whole businesses run on WhatsApp. There is no solution, simply none today that exists to allow anyone from any country to register and start making and receiving payments. Not Stripe, not Paypal, none. If Facebook can deliver something that can the…
There's absolutely zero reason for that something to be blockchain-based. They can just release Facebucks, a private fiat currency that's just backed by ... drumroll please... a relational database.
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> Many of their whatsapp users live in very poor areas that are not traditionally served by banks. Bingo. Remittances are still expensive. Basic bank accounts are still out of reach for many. Any user with cash could become a convert-to-fiat provider. Before Western Union had to signup shops, now you can go through your friend lists to find someone you already know and trust.
There is a saying in German: "Bei Geld hört die Freundschaft auf", roughly translated to "don't mix friends and money". Let me tell you: it's a saying for a reason.
If you need a plumber, in some parts of the world you’d be insane to open up the phone book and call a random one. You would call your cousin who’s friends with one instead. And probably cook them lunch when they come over.
Look at MLMs and which countries and groups they thrive in, vs ones that they would never take off in.
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> If a centralized company wants to roll out electronic payments through its services it can just, you know, do that. Not it can't. There's a world outside of the US where whole businesses run on WhatsApp. There is no solution, simply none today that exists to allow anyone from any country to register and start making and receiving payments. Not Stripe, not Paypal, none. If Facebook can deliver something that can the…
And how does that person in that small village in Peru converts their WhatsApp coins, or whatever they are called, into actual money? And if the answer is: they do a transaction with someone else who wants to trade their money for WhatsApp coins then again, why do you need the blockchain versus a centralized WhatsApp currency. Blockchain is a solution when there cannot be trust. If I trust WhatsApp, and you trust Wha…
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Honest question, but does a cryptocurrency have to be decentralized for it to be determined a cryptocurrency? I didn't think that was the case. It may be more in the spirit of crypto but I don't think it's a hard requirement?
Because if it is not - it is simply a centralized database of payments. Like an SQL table of transactions. This has been a solved problem for decades. Visa and MC processing servers all use cryptography in many parts of the stack, and yet no one calls Visa a cryptocurrency because of that. This is why if you see anyone use the word "cryptocurrency" when in reality they talk about a legacy centralized (thus lacking al…
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> If a centralized company wants to roll out electronic payments through its services it can just, you know, do that. Not it can't. There's a world outside of the US where whole businesses run on WhatsApp. There is no solution, simply none today that exists to allow anyone from any country to register and start making and receiving payments. Not Stripe, not Paypal, none. If Facebook can deliver something that can the…
> If Facebook can deliver something that can then be exchanged for real dollars, that could be huge. There's absolutely zero reason for that something to be blockchain-based. They can just release Facebucks, a private fiat currency that's just backed by ... drumroll please... a relational database.
It’s almost like none of these middle-brow dismissals have ever actually experienced a payment problem in another country.
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Exactly. There is virtually a zero-chance that Facebook (or any other company) will develop and release something they have no control over.
https://github.com/facebook/buck You’re welcome.
Open source makes sense for companies because they want to share the collective engineering efforts - because often times the code itself isn't the thing being monetized directly. In the case of Facebook it's not the code that is worth billions it's the data they horde. In the context of a blockchain that would mean sharing that data with everyone instead of hording it and acting as a middle-man for advertising, which is very much against the business interests of Facebook or any company with that model.
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I presume the point was why do FB / WA need to use the blockchain?
because you still want the currency to have value if facebook closes one day, or stop supporting the idea. Facebook would endorse the currency, but the currency ecosystem would have a life of its own. At least that’s my guess..
If it were merely an account one used to pay for things then they just get to take a small percentage in transaction fees but with a blockchain they can create a bunch of FaceCoins, sell them on the open market and if things go south with their cryptocurrency laugh all the way to the bank counting their billions.
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Exactly. There is virtually a zero-chance that Facebook (or any other company) will develop and release something they have no control over.
https://github.com/facebook/buck You’re welcome.