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Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

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Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#101

Post by xhruso00 »

wcoenen wrote: post #47
CaptainZapp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you transferred money across borders to an individual lately? Actually yes. From Switzerland to my brother in Belgium. It was transferred on the same business day at no expense to him or me. Look up SEPA[1] for details. Just because the American banking system is the complete shits this does not necessarily apply to the rest of the world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

SEPA is okay, but it's typically not "same business day". Just this week I initiated a transfer on Tuesday and it only arrived Thursday morning. This was between two Belgian accounts.

There is some update regarding SEPA. Not mandatory atm but in a year instant transfers using SEPA will be real. Now 2 working days max. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/target/tips/html/index.en.htm... https://www.paymentsjournal.com/sepa-instant-payments-in-act...

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#102

Post by mc32 »

will_brown wrote: post #99
wz1000 wrote: post #6

Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? Since you are dependent on the issuing entity to honour the stated peg, why not just have your balance be an entry in a regular database maintained by that entity? What exactly does the blockchain gain you here? One thing it does _not_ get you is censorship resistance. If the central authority wants to take away coins from a wallet, all it needs to do i…

>Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? What was the point of arcades taking your quarters and issuing you tokens for the machines? Why not just allow the machines to take your quarters? The idea is for the issuer to take real money from you and issue you Monopoly money which the issuer can track and control. In a worst case scenario the issuer can make up new rules (change their terms and c…

And importantly the tokens can be unilaterally devalued without having to change the slots or recalibrate. So instead of 25¢ and next step being 50¢ if using the same config, they can charge you 27, or 48 or 50¢ for the token and not have to reconfigure the machine one bit.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#103

Post by elliekelly »

naringas wrote: post #8

> with zero fees via Facebook products including Messenger and WhatsApp reminds me of the classic "If You're Not Paying For It, You Become The Product" edit: the prototypical crypto (bitcoin) has fees as the final (after there's no more new btc) incentive for miners to process transactions. but this doesn't? probably we'll have to look at their white paper but if Facebook is the only actor running this network why ma…

> but if Facebook is the only actor running this network why make it a cryptocurrency at all?

They're selling a seat at the governance table for $10 million. I suspect in an effort to put this new token in the decentralized/not a security bucket the SEC views ETH. That allows them to avoid registration and the enforcement headache Kik is currently dealing with. Quite clever on Facebook's part. Zuckerberg is smart enough to give up a bit of control and toe the line ("decentralized"... among his Wall Street friends) rather than retain complete control and run head-first into a regulatory brick wall. FTA:

> Facebook is in talks to create an independent foundation to oversee its cryptocurrency, The Information reports. It’s asking companies to pay $10 million to operate a node that can validate transactions made with its cryptocurrency in exchange for a say in governance of the token. It’s possible that node operators could benefit financially too. By introducing a level of decentralization to the governance of the project, Facebook may be able to avoid regulation related to it holding too much power over a global currency.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#104

Post by mrlala »

wz1000 wrote: post #6

Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? Since you are dependent on the issuing entity to honour the stated peg, why not just have your balance be an entry in a regular database maintained by that entity? What exactly does the blockchain gain you here? One thing it does _not_ get you is censorship resistance. If the central authority wants to take away coins from a wallet, all it needs to do i…

>Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is?

Because it has a completely stable value, from the standpoint of someone who always uses that currency. Let's say it's pegged to USD. Boom, if I'm in the US and everything I do is in USD, this cryptocurrency can suddenly be the same as actual dollars from my standpoint. There's virtually no difference.

The USD has an almost completely stable value to the standard person in the US. Everything they do is in USD. They don't care about some fluctuations vs other currencies vs EUR etc. I'm not saying there are zero affects, of course there are, but there's really nothing they can do about it. EUR goes up 10% to the USD, ok something they buy which is imported from europe is maybe 10% more expensive in USD.. there is nothing they can do about that, so the USD is still completely stable from their perspective. It's not like most people are saying "Oh 1% of my purchases this year are coming from Europe, so I'm going to hold 1% of my assets in EUR to mitigate this affect".

>What exactly does the blockchain gain you here?

Given the above, that means that the crypto currency is now 100% the same as holding USD. I'm not holding cyrpto as a diversifier, or to get magically rich by a big crypto move. I would actually hold crypto TO USE IT.

Maybe I want to send my brother $50 who lives in a different place. Wouldn't it be cool to just send some crypto knowing that it's virtually exactly $50 when I send it and always after that? Open the phone on some app, click a button and boom. Without having to worry about any intermediary bank etc.

This whole notion that crypto SHOULD NOT be pegged is looking at some dystopian future where a currency like the USD is not stable anymore. And hey, I'm not saying that could never happen.. but the world will have pretty much exploded if that ever happens so I'm not sure your cryptocurrency will help much in that case.

Crypto right now is a get rich quick scheme with extremely little actual use cases. Pegging one to the USD would make it usable- which should be the whole point...

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#105

Post by Lordarminius »

trophycase wrote: post #89
mbrock wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It totally depends on the source and destination of the transfer. My girlfriend's small art house cinema recently transferred money to pay a filmmaker for festival participation and the correspondent bank fee was something like 60 euros on a 100 euro transfer.

Just use Bitcoin? I mean I know people give it a lot of shit for some reason, but this is a perfect usecase for it.

Or Pirate Arr, or Litecoin

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#106

Post by elliekelly »

peteretep wrote: post #93
A2017U1 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you transferred money across borders to an individual lately? As much as I want to criticize this FB is probably in an excellent position to navigate the kyc minefields.

> Have you transferred money across borders to an individual lately? Yes, frequently. Using TransferWise or FairFx, depending on where the recipient was, but inclusive of Thailand, USA, Ecuador, and Canada. The process was entirely painless, fast, and the transfer was cheap as chips, while bringing to bear the full weight of European bank regulations to protect me as a customer.

> The process was entirely painless, fast, and the transfer was cheap as chips, while bringing to bear the full weight of European bank regulations to protect me as a customer.

I wish more people on HN would understand the importance of this. I've said it here before but I think it's worth repeating. Banks want to send your money internationally and, as you've said, are more than capable of sending your money quickly and cheaply. Any time an international bank transfer is a pain in the ass it's by design to protect consumer interests and/or to protect government interests. There's a reason you can't just rock up to the teller at Wells Fargo and send $1,000 to North Korea the same way you can if you needed to send $1,000 to Canada.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#107

Post by chabes »

mc32 wrote: post #102
will_brown wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? What was the point of arcades taking your quarters and issuing you tokens for the machines? Why not just allow the machines to take your quarters? The idea is for the issuer to take real money from you and issue you Monopoly money which the issuer can track and control. In a worst case scenario the issuer can make up new rules (change their terms and c…

And importantly the tokens can be unilaterally devalued without having to change the slots or recalibrate. So instead of 25¢ and next step being 50¢ if using the same config, they can charge you 27, or 48 or 50¢ for the token and not have to reconfigure the machine one bit.

So, there’s obvious benefits for FB. What are the benefits for users? Are people actually going to want to use this?

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#108

Post by kannanvijayan »

mc32 wrote: post #102
will_brown wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? What was the point of arcades taking your quarters and issuing you tokens for the machines? Why not just allow the machines to take your quarters? The idea is for the issuer to take real money from you and issue you Monopoly money which the issuer can track and control. In a worst case scenario the issuer can make up new rules (change their terms and c…

And importantly the tokens can be unilaterally devalued without having to change the slots or recalibrate. So instead of 25¢ and next step being 50¢ if using the same config, they can charge you 27, or 48 or 50¢ for the token and not have to reconfigure the machine one bit.

It also allows for the possibility of selling at discounted rates for volume. $1 for 4 tokens, but $10 gets you 50 instead of 40.

There is _some_ inherent value in this. Decoupling the currency rate from a unit of time play provides an entrypoint for the store to incorporate value models that aren't captured by currency alone.

In the volume discount case, this allows them to incorporate fixed overhead models into the pricing scheme for game time.

I don't dispute the point, however, that the model does allow for abuse along other lines, and is often used that way in practice.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#109

Post by bduerst »

will_brown wrote: post #99
wz1000 wrote: post #6

Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? Since you are dependent on the issuing entity to honour the stated peg, why not just have your balance be an entry in a regular database maintained by that entity? What exactly does the blockchain gain you here? One thing it does _not_ get you is censorship resistance. If the central authority wants to take away coins from a wallet, all it needs to do i…

>Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? What was the point of arcades taking your quarters and issuing you tokens for the machines? Why not just allow the machines to take your quarters? The idea is for the issuer to take real money from you and issue you Monopoly money which the issuer can track and control. In a worst case scenario the issuer can make up new rules (change their terms and c…

As many mobile app games have shown, you don't need a cryptocurrency to achieve this, just some arbitrary point system. I think GP was asking, "Why Cryptocurrency?" since the benefits of blockchain don't really translate to this system.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#110

Post by Lordarminius »

floor_ wrote: post #65

I find it funny that bitcoin fails to do what it was created to do and that people are so invested in it they can't change it or let it die. You can't buy a cup of coffee without paying large confirmation fees or delaying the transaction for day to weeks. There was talk about decentralizing smaller transactions to ease up on that but that defeats the whole purpose of bitcoin.

Many new inventions fail to do what they set out to originally do.That does not make them less valuable. Viagra started out as an anti-angina drug, Coca cola was originally a cough syrup, VCRs found an initial niche in recording porn.

If Bitcoin fails as a currency but succeeds as a store of value, that's still a win.

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