Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#321

Post by b1daly » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 7:55 AM UTC

bitreality wrote: post #148

bduerst wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It allows for a tiered system. Average users will use the token entirely within the Facebook ecosystem. Advanced users will have the ability to withdraw their tokens from Facebook's system and utilize them on other platforms. Look at Paypal USD Balance. It's really just a "token" issued by PayPal, an IOU where 1 PaypalUSD = 1 USD Debt from Paypal. But PayPalUSD can only be used within Paypal.com. The only way to brin…

That doesn’t require a blockchain based system though. A single entity can secure a crypto currency.

You can convert PayPal directly into US dollars at your bank, so I don’t think they would see any benefit to supporting such a distributed token system unless the could make a cut on every transaction.

I’m having a hard time seeing Facebook being able to support a stable coin without being subject to the same regulations and cost as any other system.

Perhaps they will get a competitive advantage through data mining and could charge smaller transaction fees.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#322

Post by eng101 » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 8:23 AM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #37

alehul wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Across very cooperative borders in wealthy Europe, sure. Do you think it's as easy for those in India, China, or Kenya, for instance?

Kenya is a relatively bad example. While a lot of people are underbanked mobile banking and - payments took off in a spectacular way.[1] It's probably easier to transfer funds via M-Pesa then from a bank account in Delaware to a bank account in Detroit And, at least in theory, America is a wealthy country without any borders. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

You’re right. I find it stupendously easy to move money within/into Kenya.

I can easily pay a street seller from my US bank account, directly to his/her phone, in seconds.

Pains me to say this because I had this international bank/credit card to M-Pesa transfers idea a decade ago, a professor dissuaded me from pursuing it.

5 years later, a bunch of services launched and many are thriving.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#323

Post by igravious » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #198

jbverschoor wrote: post #189

More and more I get the feeling that the majority of the HN crowd are FB employees. Any other post about crypto is a scam. Any other tech than react is immature. Etc etc. Have fun at FB guys, I hope your share vest soon

[flagged]

Brilliant insightful comment – and of course you're being downvoted for voicing your insight because it reflects negatively on the tech elites around here. Just downvotes, but no actual rebuttals.

I just finished watching a BoomBu$t video on YouTube. The analysts points out that Facebook has for the longest time been blocking ICO adverts and other cryptocurrency adverts. Now that Facebook is releasing its own cryptocurrency apparently they're relaxing the rules. How convenient. That should fall foul of anti-trust laws if prosecutors within the government were doing their jobs properly. Facebook clearly have a social media monopoly in many many markets through FB/messenger/WhatsApp/Instagram. Banning a certain type of advertising before you yourself enter that advertising space is flat out anti-competitive. Facebook should be broken up into those four component imho.

Has anybody on HN mentioned this shady practice? Not that I can see.

You'd want to be very foolish to use a corporate cryptocurrency from a company as unethical as Facebook.

source: https://youtu.be/HhDpWrIBseo?t=1187

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#324

Post by igravious » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

entropea wrote: post #290

seangrant wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've wondered... Do all Facebook/Google employees drink the Kool aid? Are there no privacy proponents?

You have to have loose morals & ethics, be a misanthrope, or be completely oblivious to the world to even work at Facebook or Google anymore.

I think you could make that case easily for Facebook but less easily for Google. The number of useful Google products (AOSP, for instance) is enormous. They contribute massively to open source†. Their co-founders clearly have less evil tendencies that Facebook's founder. Their free products are insanely useful. A lot of Google's products have a price tag attached to them especially for the enterprise sector where they don't trade your data. I would compare Google to Apple and Microsoft and Amazon. Facebook is a totally different entity – I'm of the opinion that Facebook should _never_ have been allowed to acquire WhatsApp and Instagram.

† Before anyone points out that FB contribute to open source… they've about, what, 50 projects, Google has over 2,000 and has been running that Google Summer of Code project for many years which supports 1,000s of projects outside Google.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#325

Post by tcgv » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

InvisibleCities wrote: post #156

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…

But that doesn't really answer the question being asked. If the cryptocurrency is completely controlled by a centralized authority who has absolute rights over the system, why bother with the technical and cognitive hurdles of using a blockchain? A standard ledger in a centralized database is more than adequate for that task, and much easier to maintain.

> why bother with the technical and cognitive hurdles of using a blockchain

A blockchain can be implemented in a very simple way when operated by a centralized authority. What adds complexity to it is the consensus protocol required for decentralization when you cannot trust all parties in the network.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#326

Post by randomsearch » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

itslennysfault wrote: post #214

tim333 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Facebook. Is there any way they can harm me as a result apart from maybe trying to show adverts which I don't see. (I use uBlock and fbpurity).

It's more big picture. Your individual data is useless. The data of a huge % of the US (or other country, or planet) is extremely powerful. As a facebook user you contribute to that data. So, no you individually using fb or not doesn't really matter other than on principle. I don't use it because I find them morally reprehensible, but I also understand my boycott is purely symbolic unless another 100m or so people jo…

One more boycotter here.

More likely a boycott will prove unnecessary; the biggest threats to Facebook are (a) fashion and (b) facebook.

... but not using Facebook makes me feel better.

I think Facebook will slowly decay into irrelevance.

One thing that really surprises me is how few startups are taking on Facebook. Obvious strategy is to work at the edges; there are so many opportunities abound to undermine them. Don’t build a new Facebook, instead just carve off their features incrementally and be the Instagram of events, classifieds, chat, video, news sharing, interest groups... huge scope for innovation. Facebook is the SAP of social networks, it’s time to move on.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#327

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

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…

That is a beautiful analogy.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#328

Post by will_brown » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #175

will_brown wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I responded to a few comments in kind, and I’d say it’s impossible to answer in a vacuum without knowing the actual token use case/function. Generically, we have seen instances where centralized ledgers/databases are manipulated and permit double spend. Even in the case of multi billion dollar publicly traded companies going Private, during due diligence we have seen upward of double the issued shares of stock than a…

Plenty of blockchains have allowed double spending as well due to errors in coding of either the clients, the blockchain implementation itself, or due to faulty contracts.

Well sure there has been shitty code that has allowed doublespend or unintended transfers...but the satoshi nakamoto Blockchain did solve the problem of double spend on a decentralized peer to peer network, do you disagree?

Take the current status of publicly traded companies, they require a lot of middlemen to manage these centralized stock ledgers, including, the corporate general counsel, underwriters/investment banks, stock trust, stock exchanges, and stock brokers/trading apps.

Each one of those middlemen takes a significant slice of the pie, whereas Blockchain would allow corporatations to bypass all these middlemen and allow stock to be issued and traded P2P.

Is there a reason you believe the existing centralized stock ledgers of public companies and system of middlemen is more advantageous than having P2P stock on a distributed ledger/network?

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#329

Post by b_tterc_p » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

akdfd wrote: post #173

b_tterc_p wrote: post #149

I don’t think this will be particularly successful. We already have a variety of ways to send money. Yes Facebook is big, but so is, say, Apple and it’s Apple Pay functionality. I don’t know what use case this solves that isn’t fairly competitive already although it will probably have a bitcoin style valuation bubble. It’s also sort of capped in its utility. If it overshadows national government currencies... the gov…

> it will probably have a bitcoin style valuation bubble It's a stable coin so it can't have such a bubble. It's main utility will probably only be cross border p2p payments for countries that allow it.

That doesn’t feel like something that’s useful for messenger integration? Messenger integration implies to me local transactions for minor debts and splitting fares and what not.

Re: Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

#330

Post by olalonde » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #312

olalonde wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's precisely what I have issue with. No I don't think a "blockchain" is merely a public database nor that git is a "blockchain". The term "blockchain" was initially defined as the proof-of-work data structure that Bitcoin uses to store transactions and its definition was later slightly expanded to describe that same data structure used in other cryptocurrencies. If it now just means "public database" then we…

Proof of work is merely one form of consensus algorithms. There are many forms of consensus algorithms. > Git also uses merkle trees Blockchains are not a complicated concept. They are merely a merkle tree combined with a consensus algorithm. That's it. People try to make these concepts way more complicated than they actually are. A lot of this crypto stuff is actually quite simple.

It was the only one at the time. Since then a few alternatives have been proposed but none that rival PoW, at least in terms of security.

> Blockchains are not a complicated concept. They are merely a merkle tree combined with a consensus algorithm. That's it.

I wouldn't say so, the block chain is a chain, not a tree. Actually, the use of merkle trees to represent transaction data is an implementation detail. Bitcoin would have worked fine without them (though "lightweight" clients would have suffered a bit).

I second that it's a simple concept though.