This will enable people to start thinking of money in a more pseudo-P2P way, get comfortable with it, and in turn allow them to start understanding better what cryptocurrencies really are (which Libra is not). What cryptocurrency and Libra share is, at least, the concept of ownership via public/private key cryptography, as opposed to identity-based systems such as paypal/banks/credit/debit. This has some UX-side-effects that people will start to learn, such as the push vs pull system (e.g. it's not anymore the merchant who scans your QR code, but the other way around, the customer scans the merchant's payment-info).
Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#132Soon 'The Libra Reserve' will hold only a 10th of the total Libra Coins in circulation (fractional reserve). A global federal reserve in the making.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#133Moving in the direction of an everything app, like WeChat? I was horrified at this news at first, but WeChat isn't too terrifying, and they're far more ubiquitous. I just hope the social network aspect of Facebook (and Instagram) continues to shrivel.
Finding out people use a proprietary chat app as a primary payment mechanism is indeed terrifying. Now on to a proprietary currency!
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#134Moving in the direction of an everything app, like WeChat? I was horrified at this news at first, but WeChat isn't too terrifying, and they're far more ubiquitous. I just hope the social network aspect of Facebook (and Instagram) continues to shrivel.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#135I will answer the question that is always asked in every post regarding blockchains on HN: "Why blockchain? Can't this be done with a database?" Blockchains are databases. They are distributed, append-only, tamper-proof databases. You could call them that, or instead you could just say "blockchain" as that is what type of database the word blockchain has come to be understood as. The reason to use a blockchain rather…
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#136It says testnet only until early 2020. Coincidentally, Ethereum recently announced Ethereum 2.0 releasing in early 2020. I consider Libra Coin an effort to cash in on the cryptocurrency hype with a type of bank, before real cryptocurrencies can scale and become mainstream and therefore block such an effort. So I see it as a moral imperative for developers to try to kill the project. The fact that they are making it o…
Facebook had already banned advertising other cryptocurrencies in the run-up to this announcement (well, back in January 2018), so the effort to prevent other cryptocurrencies from scaling is well underway.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#137Interesting. I'm curious to see how it plays out. I can see it working if they make Libras look valuable in itself for their user base (eg. Being able to get Libras from other users for services or content and then being able to buy real things with it). Given it's not "real money" would you be exempt of most taxes?
Pretty sure barter is taxed as well. Otherwise you’d see people evading sales taxes by transacting in bitcoin a long time ago.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#138When I consider that 1) all transactions must pass through validators 2) which are hand picked 3) by the worlds largest surveillance machine 4) that knows most everything there is to know about me already, I'm thinking I'll take a pass on this one.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#139When I consider that 1) all transactions must pass through validators 2) which are hand picked 3) by the worlds largest surveillance machine 4) that knows most everything there is to know about me already, I'm thinking I'll take a pass on this one.
You'll take a pass but the majority of the people won't so most likely you'll end up using it.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#140I will answer the question that is always asked in every post regarding blockchains on HN: "Why blockchain? Can't this be done with a database?" Blockchains are databases. They are distributed, append-only, tamper-proof databases. You could call them that, or instead you could just say "blockchain" as that is what type of database the word blockchain has come to be understood as. The reason to use a blockchain rather…