Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 345 posts

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#121

Post by tehsauce »

ehrtt wrote: post #96
A2017U1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely this, many in the West have no idea how difficult crossborder banking actually is for the vast majority of human beings on Earth.

And FBcoin won't make it any easier, capital controls in India and China won't just go away (not that FB is even allowed in China). Centralized entities will be regulated to maintain the status quo.

Yes, it's all legal issues. If the government doesn't want money to easily be sent in/out of the country, this isn't going to change that

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#122

Post by dmix »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #108
mc32 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Plus the regulatory checks can be limited to cashing out and converting the coins to fiat. Instead of within each geographic or existing regulatory boundary within the network.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#124

Post by throwayEngineer »

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.

I use Shift for coffee purchases and don't pay fees.

People built on top of Bitcoin.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#125

Post by jeromegv »

mbrock wrote: post #56
hocuspocus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SWIFT transfers aren't particularly slow or expensive these days. I use TransferWise but it's not cheaper in all cases.

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.

Try Transferwise, those kind of fees are insane.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#126

Post by fullshark »

negamax wrote: post #118

I will revisit this thread in 2021 just to see how wrong everyone was. FB has billions of users that interact with its product everyday. People who make plans, attend events, split all sort of bills. A borderless stablecoin will be a gamechanger. It can fuel commerce but above that it will kill many middlemen and rightly so.

A payments system on Facebook makes a ton of sense and would be very useful. I just don't get why it has to be cryptocurrency.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#127

Post by peteretep »

aianus wrote: post #119
peteretep wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> transfer was cheap as chips I used TransferWise once a few years ago from USD to CAD and it cost ~1.4% all-in. That's cheaper than my bank but still very expensive if you're transferring your whole salary every pay period like I was. I ended up using Bitcoin instead. Is it cheaper now?

I paid 0.5% all in on a salary-sized GBP/THB transfer a few days ago.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#128

Post by stvswn »

negamax wrote: post #118

I will revisit this thread in 2021 just to see how wrong everyone was. FB has billions of users that interact with its product everyday. People who make plans, attend events, split all sort of bills. A borderless stablecoin will be a gamechanger. It can fuel commerce but above that it will kill many middlemen and rightly so.

I agree to the extent that many seem to acknowledge the transfer and remittance use case but seem to think that the market is already filled by niche players -- the fact that FB doesn't have to contend with network effects because everyone already has Messenger and/or WhatsApp is a huge deal.

It is simultaneously the case that FB can't build this and then magically be exempt from each jurisdiction's laws related to cross-border transfers. It's not like a real decentralized coin where there's no real enforcement mechanism, each government will know exactly where to knock and FB will play ball with reporting requirements, etc.

I think the right analogy is that they want to be to the rest of the world what AliPay is to China -- ubiquitious, so that it will very quickly be the case that you know everyone supports it in the world so you don't need to carry around your credit cards. Sort of like what Apple and Google Pay would want to be but with a larger incentive for retailers to adopt it as it has instantly higher penetration among users. It also might be more likely that messaging payments to a retailer becomes the norm instead of NFC (like how everyone in China pays for a restaurant check with AliPay by simply sending payment via message to the address, usually on the table in a QR code).

I'm not sure that it needs to be a blockchain but I assume it's about making the economics work by cutting out middlemen. If FB gets everyone to use this in their daily lives, however, it'll be a huge win for FB even if they don't make money on it directly -- because purchase data is very valuable, but also because you can't feasibly get rid of FB once it becomes your normal payment method.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#129

Post by will_brown »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #108
mc32 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

I think at the point of discounts of a USD stable coin...a good arguement could be made that is an investment contract/security that needs to be registered.

If that were true, it would highlight how SEC is treating cryptocoins differently than say gift cards (which are often sold with discounts).

Of course either way FB could in theory probably register their coin with the SEC anyway without much difficulty.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#130

Post by will_brown »

chabes wrote: post #107
mc32 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Probably have to wait for the whitepaper to come out to give a fair opinion/analysis (rather than an article about the future release of the whitepaper).

Once the actual use case/function of the token is know then one could answer if there is a benefit to users and if a Blockchain token makes sense over a database.

Post reply on HN