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

Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency: Privacy and stability concerns

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 262 posts

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

#161

Post by EthanHeilman »

tomc1985 wrote: post #140
EthanHeilman wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big difference between your money sitting in a single file under the control of a single party and your money sitting in three files under the control of three parties.

I'm not so sure. Sure you can prevent one party changing the data in the DB but the decentralized model seems to carry a lot more risk. I can't wait for the day when todays encryption can be cracked by tomorrow's commodity hardware...

>Sure you can prevent one party changing the data in the DB but the decentralized model seems to carry a lot more risk.

Lets say you have 7 permissioned nodes that are running a BFT protocol to establish a shared DB. I'd be interested to hear why?

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

#162

Post by root_axis »

BinaryResult wrote: post #160
root_axis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the substantive meaning behind "fuckn suck"? As an example, most exchanges and processors have both BTC and BCH so if you're not a speculator there isn't much functional difference. (I know there are technical differences, but those differences don't change the fact that they are fungible blockchain tokens)

BCH usage is laughable. See for yourself. https://txhighway.com/

I don't disagree that the usage is laughable, but that doesn't really matter if you're trying to use BCH as a currency instead of a speculation vehicle. BCH converts to cash just as easily as BTC does once its in an exchange.

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

#163

Post by gervase »

grey-area wrote: post #127
throwawaylolx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

If it fails, they lose their investment, which I believe was only on the order of double-digit millions, which is nothing to Visa. If it succeeds with their investment, they have a tiny amount of leverage. If it succeeds without their investment, they have no leverage at all.

A $10MM investment as a hedge against that outcome makes a lot of business sense, from a risk mitigation standpoint. The size of the investment is also indicative of their relative confidence that it will succeed - if they were sure that it would succeed and supplant their core business, they'd probably be investing a lot more.

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

#164

Post by thecupisblue »

dralley wrote: post #117
thecupisblue wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>It enables faster transactions and reactions to the transaction states than regular currency. This is only true in the US, where the inter-bank financial system runs on mainframes and 40 year old code. The British banking system decided a while ago that they were going to update their bank communication system, and now they can send sums between bank accounts at different banks within 10 seconds.

Also in the EU. Transactions halt at 3 or 5 PM between different banks and don't happen on the weekends AFAIK. At least from what I know from using regular banks.

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

#165

Post by root_axis »

polyomino wrote: post #151
root_axis wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the substantive meaning behind "fuckn suck"? As an example, most exchanges and processors have both BTC and BCH so if you're not a speculator there isn't much functional difference. (I know there are technical differences, but those differences don't change the fact that they are fungible blockchain tokens)

the functional difference is that BCH doesn't have a meaningful portion of the SHA256 hashrate, so it's vulnerable to 51% attack all the time. But, it's basically worthless so nobody cares.

That's not a functional difference since it doesn't affect how the coin functions for users. BCH is certainly more at risk for a 51% attack but the risk is an abstract threat, not something that changes the fundamental nature of BCH. Your own logic actually demonstrates this because if some future event caused BCH to have a higher share of the hashrate then your own reasoning would demand that BTC be considered illegitimate without any technical qualities of BTC having to change.

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

#166

Post by gervase »

bduerst wrote: post #92
TACIXAT wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can move your money cheaper than credit and debit card networks. That is the only part I'm interested in. Given they are partnered with PayPal though, I'm not hopeful on it being low fee.

Those fees with credit and debit card networks aren't arbitrary - they usually cover dispute support, insurance, anti-fraud, and other financial services that consumers have come to expect. If Facebook has fees that are less than industry standard I would be highly suspect of that payment method.

They're not arbitrary, but they're not razor-thin, either. If we take a quick look at profit margins (net income over revenue) for 2017 as a proxy for fees relative to service costs, Visa was something like 36%, which is pretty good (for context, Google's is ~22%, Apple's is also ~22%, Citigroup is ~25%, Mastercard ~31%, Paypal ~13%, Facebook is just under 40%).

It would definitely be a big shift from the "support" they offer now, admittedly, but if they can break the Visa/MC duopoly at scale, I think you could make a business case for it.

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

#167

Post by catacombs »

duxup wrote: post #21
catacombs wrote: post #18

With the number of data leaks, PR disasters and the federal probes looming over Facebook, the last thing I want is the company handling any kind of financial transactions, especially if it's with cryptocurrency.

I suspect though this is just crypto currency ... in tech and name, but generally will just be controlled by facebook in a way that isn't as susceptible to the usual hacking / non reversible transactions as "real" crypto currency. I think this is really just Facebook payments that will be controlled by Facebook.

Sounds like it. I'm interested to see how this plays out ... from the sidelines. I haven't had a Facebook account in years. I deleted it a while ago and haven't looked back.

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

#168

Post by nosuchthing »

AgentME wrote: post #113
nosuchthing wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one should have to buy Bitcoin when you can mine it, oh wait it's all being printed in warehouses owned by wealthy capital holders. Surely this is Satoshi's design goal. Also don't worry about the exchanges operating out of obscure off shore islands, they probably arn't operating fractional reserves.

Bitcoin mining wasn't invented just to be an egalitarian "everyone can earn money from their computer" sort of thing. The decentralized design that Bitcoin uses needs people to do lots of processing work, the people doing this work need to be incentivized somehow to keep doing that, and then somehow the units of the new currency need to be distributed out, presumably in a way fairer than just starting Satoshi out wit…

  "The decentralized design that Bitcoin uses needs people to do lots of processing work"
You should try reading Satoshi's white paper which explains what that processing work is. (hint: there's not really any processing outside of generating a bunch of random worthless nonces in the hope that one nonce will be accepted as a winning lottery number)

The Proof of Work "algorithm" is completely unnecessary for processing transactions, and it's actually quite simple. To the point, PoW simply asks for a random number for the purpose of creating a lottery. If you want Bitcoins, you need to waste more real world energy and capital on hardware to print more lottery tickets (nonces).

The Bitcoin network and all the transactions on the network could easily be run on cheap hardware, a raspberry pi even. The PoW filter is a psychological tool for "governance" (write access) to the database, granted now exclusively to wealthy capital holders. Effectively granting the Bitcoin / PoW network to the wealthiest speculators who can devote resources to be sacrificed in return for digital lottery printers, which in turn give a chance to generate numbers in the cryptocoin database.

Curious why someone would design a currency system in objection to the financial plutocracy, when the design inevitably restricts control of the entire network only to existing capital?

It's no mistake Satoshi owns at least 1,148,800 BTC.

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

#170

Post by nas »

AgentME wrote: post #113
nosuchthing wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one should have to buy Bitcoin when you can mine it, oh wait it's all being printed in warehouses owned by wealthy capital holders. Surely this is Satoshi's design goal. Also don't worry about the exchanges operating out of obscure off shore islands, they probably arn't operating fractional reserves.

Bitcoin mining wasn't invented just to be an egalitarian "everyone can earn money from their computer" sort of thing. The decentralized design that Bitcoin uses needs people to do lots of processing work, the people doing this work need to be incentivized somehow to keep doing that, and then somehow the units of the new currency need to be distributed out, presumably in a way fairer than just starting Satoshi out wit…

I hate the term "mining" for that reason. It is not like mining gold. I would have preferred if they called it "digital notary service". That's what the miners are doing. They are notarizing transactions so people can agree on the ledger and so that double-spends cannot happen. Early in the life of the system, the notary service is subsidized by inflation. Later (after many halving of rewards), they will be compensated with transaction fees.

If someone can devise a way to perform the notary service without proof-of-work, I'm pretty sure Bitcoin will move to it. Right now, no other system has been shown to actually work. Proof-of-stake systems are in the works but, as far as I know, none of them are considered trustworthy at this point.

Edit: I would like to also say that I'm sympathetic to the opinion that Bitcoin mining is too wasteful of resources (i.e. electricity). I think the system is perhaps flawed in terms of the connection between Bitcoin price and the economic drivers of difficulty. When the price is high, the mining rewards are such that there is huge pressure to increase mining costs. Do we actually need that level of security? OTOH, hard to blame Satoshi for the design since it is hard to foresee how quickly the system gets adopted.

Post reply on HN