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Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

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Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#101
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really stupid thing to say. SV coins are SV coins, not BTC coins. Their chains don't interact and can't inflate each other, so pointing out that there are multiple blockchains doesn't make any sense.

The point is that all of these random tokens are functionally identical from the perspective of most users. If you're claiming there's a hard limit on the number of limited edition funko pop action figures produced, you'd better be able to explain what makes them any different than these other identical clones. It'd be like if counterfeit designer clothes were actually indistinguishable from the "real" ones, and argu…

The utility is not just in it's function but since it's money, also in it's purchasing power and it's network.

Your analogy is more like getting the Facebook database and spinning up 100 clones of it, all with 3 billion users. Now "Facebook" has 300 billion users. It could have a trillion or a quintillion right? Or an infinite amount. But what does that even mean if the actual 3 billion people only use the original network? It means Facebook is still Facebook, and forking it, in terms of how it affects the network it its value, is relatively pointless.

You're not making a real point.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#102
post #25

The reason for Bitcoin’s design is precisely because a centralized/pegged alternative was tried and failed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecash Facebook’s currency is not a successor of Bitcoin, it’s an inferior reincarnation of a failed predecessor.

Not to mention that pegs always fail in the land of financial markets anyhow [1]. Interest rate pegs, currency pegs, pegs to commodities e.g. gold tend to collapse in the long run because they create a "perfect trade". When the value of two separate things eventually diverge due to external market forces, you can take advantage of the peg by trading the less valuable item for the more valuable item at the historical…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is ACH "inefficient"? It's certainly slow, but speed and efficiency are not the same thing. It's far more efficient than bitcoin. It's a mainframe batch-processing system built in the 1970s, and it's mostly worked just fine for 40 years. That's pretty efficient!

The mainframe batch-processing computers might be efficient. I have no idea. I am taking about the "ACH system". It's supposedly automated but it shuts down during the weekends. There is no way to tell how long it will take for transaction will take to complete. If you listen to the NPR podcast, it took one of their transactions 8 days to complete. And why is "speed" not a measure of efficiency when it comes to trans…

We transfer most freight by slow container ships instead of fast airplanes because it's much more efficient: It's less expensive, requires less energy-per-kilo, and amortizes the cost of the vehicle over a larger volume of cargo.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has not failed. I know several people personally that are paid in it. They can also use it to buy things.

Would love to know why I was downvoted

Because to claim that bitcoin succeeded as a payment/salary method is ridiculous. Vast majority of bitcoin volume is just speculation on exchanges. The massive price volatility is a testament to why it cannot be used as a currency -- who would want to make a services/job contract that in a matter of a year could change its value by an order of magnitude. The whole point of these contracts is to hedge against future volatility. Remember, if bitcoin goes up then the employer gets screwed, if bitcoin goes down then the employee gets screwed; there is no direction that is good for everyone, only stability is good.

Furthermore, good currency should encourage investment (into things) which means it needs to be (slightly) deflationary (to introduce a cost to not investing into production). Otherwise you get into a paradoxical/toxic situation where NOT producing useful things becomes financially advantageous.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#105

If it is pegged to USD, there is no investment potential. It is just as bad as cash. The idea behind bitcoin is that you don't need to rely on the US government for storing value. There are 21,000,000 BTC ever ever, you can't print more. That article did not address this at all. This is the most compelling reason to buy bitcoin.

You have it completely wrong. Bitcoin is intended to be a cryptoCURRENCY meaning in a proper liquid market there should not be any investment potential at all.

An appreciating asset is the exact opposite of a currency. You want your currency to be stable, or slight inflation/devaluation over time, or the consequences are it will never be used to transact.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#106
post #70

I can grasp the idea that Facebook would want to capture more payments like WeChat does; what I can't figure is how having their own cryptocurrency would add anything. Whom does it appeal to? I doubt Facebook wants the drug dealer/money launderer market segment for example. (I also doubt it'll be secure or anonymous enough to satisfy those people.) And it's no good for speculators, if it's pegged. Seems like at best…

Novelty or gimmicks are appealing when your payments business is only 2% of revenue and yet lots of people are discovering products and wasting money on pay-to-win-games through your platform. Their assumption is probably that Facebook gamers (and especially the "whales") are more likely to be the sort of people excited by breathless hype about cryptocurrency being the future without really understanding much about i…

They had facebook credits before and they curbed it, so i doubt the social gamers are their target market. But a payment system a-la apple and google pay could be a safeguard for them once their social media stop being so lucrative.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you consider it legitimate or not, Bitcoin Cash has about 4% of the value of BTC. Here’s my point. Is it theoretically possible for some group of people in the physical world to take actions so that what we generally call Bitcoin has 1 more coin? I strongly believe yes. So the world isn’t as black and white as some people like to say it is.

Just as the stock market can only have 1 AAPL ticker, there can only be 1 BTC. Is it possible that in the future that BTC can have a change in emission and cap? Yes. I don't agree with that part of the parents statement. But there is in no way for there to be more than 1 BTC chain.

Stocks and cryptocurrency are not at all the same thing, I assume people think this way only because they can both be summarized as a number that moves up and down over time. Apple is a company located in the physical world that owns raw materials and a business process that transforms raw materials into value. It makes no sense to have another Apple ticker because the point of a stock is to track the value of that physical company. Cryptocurrency is totally different in the sense that it isn't a thing that exists in the physical world, instead it is a collective abstraction over a distributed database that the users agree to call "bitcoin". It is a purely political designation.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#108
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh well if it's that simple then why has it been so hard just to do something as simple as increase the block size?

Is it possible to increase the block size?

Anything is Possible with Bitcoin ᵗᵐ

Except something as simple as increasing the block size to allow Bitcoin to process more than 7 transactions a second (Visa handles 42,000 tx/s comparatively). Theoretically it is possible, but the way Bitcoin is designed puts changes in control of people who stand to profit from preventing certain changes (i.e. Tragedy of the commons) like block size increases - and they are blocking it. The point is that Bitcoin isn't some piece of software that you can magically push any necessary changes to.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#109
post #70

I can grasp the idea that Facebook would want to capture more payments like WeChat does; what I can't figure is how having their own cryptocurrency would add anything. Whom does it appeal to? I doubt Facebook wants the drug dealer/money launderer market segment for example. (I also doubt it'll be secure or anonymous enough to satisfy those people.) And it's no good for speculators, if it's pegged. Seems like at best…

They're using cryptocurrency because - off the top of my head in no particular order: 1. Hype 2. It gives "credibility" to their currency 3. they can be regulated as a crypto-currency that way. 4. It enables faster transactions and reactions to the transaction states than regular currency. 5. It locks the users in to their partners because it's more friction to get money. 6. Easier to obtain the data on how users spe…

All of those things except #1 can be accomplished with a standard virtual currency and a DB. There's no reason to use a blockchain.

Re: Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

#110
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unforeseen future circumstances could make people less amenable. Saying "we just don't know what the future may hold" in support of a claim is an argument from ignorance.

> Unforeseen future circumstances could make people less amenable True, but irrelevant. It doesn't matter either way. The point is that it can be done if that is what conventionial wisdom dictates is desirable at the time.

Conventional wisdom also dictates that it is desirable for Bitcoin to handle more than 7 transactions a second - and yet that problem isn't possible for Bitcoin to solve either.

Again, it's an argument from ignorance and gross oversimplification to claim "the future wisdom of the community" will solve problems for bitcoin.

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