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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

#121

Post by nostrademons »

runeks wrote: 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.

The surrounding context around an idea is always changing. Facebook itself was tried many times with various degrees of success (MySpace; Friendster; LiveJournal; Classmates.com; Xanga; EZBoards; AOL; Usenet; fingerd; BBSes; etc.), but it took a new and relatively trusting generation getting online and being packed onto dense college campuses to make it take off.

I personally think that Facebook's cryptocurrency will fail because today's climate is anything but trusting, but just because an idea failed in 1983 doesn't mean it'd fail today. There's also a strong possibility of it succeeding in the developing world and failing in the developed world.

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

#122

Post by root_axis »

travisjungroth wrote: post #119
root_axis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

It’s an interesting argument that a cryptocurrency designation is more political than a corporation! I argue that they’re about the same. A corporation is largely numbers in computers and how people feel about them. A cryptocurrency is numbers in computers and how people feel about therm. Typing this out makes me appreciate gold a bit more. Gold is gold, whether we give it a different name or not. It’s not pure thoug…

A corporation is not "pure thought-stuff"; it is a legal designation for a physical business process facilitated by people and machines in the real world. The legal entity "corporation" is purely political, but the thing we really care about (a business process) is ultimately pegged to physical reality. The legal corporate entity is the map, the business-process-in-action is the territory.

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

#123

Post by tomc1985 »

nostrademons wrote: post #121
runeks wrote: 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.

The surrounding context around an idea is always changing. Facebook itself was tried many times with various degrees of success (MySpace; Friendster; LiveJournal; Classmates.com; Xanga; EZBoards; AOL; Usenet; fingerd; BBSes; etc.), but it took a new and relatively trusting generation getting online and being packed onto dense college campuses to make it take off. I personally think that Facebook's cryptocurrency will…

Facebook's original success was because the platform was somewhat pure (no arbitrary CSS decorating profiles) and exclusive. They reached the critical mass they needed at that phase then opened it to the public

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

#124

Post by tomc1985 »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #120
driverdan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd much rather buy a virtual currency (pegged or not) than values in Facebook's database. A cryptocurrency gives you a certain baseline level of reliability over value and function that values in a centrally controlled database do not. It remains to be seen how much control Facebook will ultimately have over their cryptocurrency, so this point may be moot.

So... values in a decentralized database are worth more or something? You don't actually hold anything with cryptocurrency, it's all still line-items in a DB. E.g. the bitcoin you hold is only as good as the decentralized ledger says it is

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

#125

Post by easymodex »

ForHackernews wrote: post #96
beaner wrote: 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…

Yeah but they are not functionally identical as Bitcoin's value comes from it being immutable, decentralized and failure-proof.

Also a better analogy would be that you can make 1000 copies of the Mona Lisa in whatever way you want, they will still be just copies and they will be worthless.

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

#126

Post by root_axis »

bduerst wrote: post #110
root_axis wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can equivocate all you like, but accusing me of ignorance doesn't make it so. It's an undeniable fact that it is possible for any of these properties to change and the poster that claimed it was impossible for them to change is wrong. There is no debate here, it's just reality.

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

#127

Post by grey-area »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #68
grey-area wrote: post #62

This appears to be: 1. Pegged to USD 2. Controlled by a central entity 3. Tied to a social media account So it has very little to do with currencies like bitcoin (it certainly violates the spirit of them, even if it chooses to reproduce some of the morphology), but they are IMO associating it with cryptocurrencies for publicity and more importantly in the hope of avoiding regulation by confounding regulators for long…

>payment networks like Visa/Mastercard/Paypal should be most worried by this I don't think they're worried seeing that they're some of the biggest investors in the project https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-new-cryptocurrency-ge...

I’d be concerned if dealing with Zuckerberg.

If it fails they lose lots of money, if it succeeds FB has huge leverage over them which it didn’t have before. Can’t really see an upside for these companies to this.

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

#128

Post by root_axis »

bduerst wrote: post #108
root_axis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bloc…

So is that a "yes, it's possible" or "no, it's impossible"? "Theoretically it's possible" sounds like it's possible. Saying "here are some examples of things that didn't happen" doesn't prove that they, or anything else, can't happen.

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

#129

Post by okmokmz »

jrvxo wrote: post #114
root_axis wrote: post #83

I think Facebook's reputation will be enough to relegate this thing to the ash heap. The only people who are going to be interested in Facebook coins are some subset of cryptocurrency enthusiast who can find value in moving their cryptocurrency into a coin that will have more onramps to spendable money. For everyone else, it's going to be viewed as yet another digital money app you have to hook up to your bank accoun…

Facebook's reputation outside HN is not bad. In fact I'd argue that in undeveloped countries it's pretty, pretty good.

>Facebook's reputation outside HN is not bad

It depends who you talk to. The only people I know who still use, or don't hold a negative view of, Facebook are my parents, grandparents, and other old people who certainly won't be purchasing Facebook's "cryptocurrency". The vast majority of the young people I talk to, as well as other engineers, have a negative view of Facebook and don't use their services (aside from maybe Instagram). The latter is the group that would potentially be interested in crypto, but they won't be buying it from Facebook. Personally, I hope Facebook fails spectacularly

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

#130

Post by russdpale »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #47
runeks wrote: 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.

How is it inferior to Ecash? FB's coin is not meant to provide anonymity features like Ecash did, but that's just a design choice. Other than that, Ecash is often suspected to have died due to the lack of reach and partnerships, which is not something FB lacks. So far, FB's coin looks very interesting. >Facebook’s currency is not a successor of Bitcoin Yeah the title is just low-quality clickbait; it's got nothing to…

I don't think its clickbait, a lot of projects in the crypto space claim to be like bitcoin but better, bitcoin is the foundation upon which a lot of projects showcase themselves to potential users, usually in the first few paragraphs of the white paper.

This coin might look interesting, but for all of the wrong reasons.

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