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Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#141

Post by cy6erlion »

knocte wrote: post #131

While I agree with most commenters here that are skeptical about a surveillance-based currency, I'm very positive about the idea of having mainstream apps such as Whatsapp and Messenger introduce the concept of paying with your phone without needing to link your accounts with any bank account or debit/credit card, because the money is in theory being held by your device (under the hood, just holding a private key of…

It can also have the other effect in that it can show cryptography based solutions in a bad light to the public as yet another form of survailance and cause people to be less trusting even when authentic cryptography based money systems exist.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#142

Post by Philip_Woodman »

Facebook unveiled an ambitious plan on Tuesday to create an alternative financial system that relies on a cryptocurrency that the company has been secretly working on for more than a year.

The effort, announced with 27 partners as diverse as Mastercard and Uber, could face immediate skepticism from people who question the usefulness of cryptocurrencies and others who are wary of the power already accumulated by the social media company.

The cryptocurrency, called Libra, will also have to overcome concern that Facebook does not effectively protect the private information of its users — a fundamental task for a bank or anyone handling financial transactions.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#143

Post by thefounder »

knocte wrote: post #131

While I agree with most commenters here that are skeptical about a surveillance-based currency, I'm very positive about the idea of having mainstream apps such as Whatsapp and Messenger introduce the concept of paying with your phone without needing to link your accounts with any bank account or debit/credit card, because the money is in theory being held by your device (under the hood, just holding a private key of…

What's the point of public/private keys if the whole thing can be reversed, recovered and changed by FB with no transparency for the outside world?

The private key becomes just a better password, like a SSH key based authentication. Actually I'm pretty sure the wallet will not even require any key. You will be able to sign in with facebook.

I see no P2P payments here as everything is really validated by FB and all the data is kept under fb control. The client sees just an old good REST/RPC API with no public access to the backend. The client wallets will be no better/powerful than a paypal client app/wallet. There will be no blockchain to download...as matter of fact you won't even be able to tell if FB really uses blockchain behind the curtains.

Not to mention that you need to "signup" for an account and verify it with facebook before you can receive any "coin". In reality there is no coin. Is no different than paypal really.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#144

Post by aogaili »

alangibson wrote: post #139
aogaili wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll take a pass but the majority of the people won't so most likely you'll end up using it.

The average civilian associates cryptocurrencies with high profile thefts and dark web drug dealers because that's what makes it into the mainstream media. At best this will panic the big payment processors into making traditional payment options cheaper and easier, further undermining what little reason this has for existing.

The average civilian cares and understand nothing of that, all they care about it is the fastest/simplest/cheapest way to move their money around. Since WhatsUp and Facebook are ubiquitous by now, and everyone knows how to use them, so will that currency be.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#145

Post by knocte »

thefounder wrote: post #143
knocte wrote: post #131

While I agree with most commenters here that are skeptical about a surveillance-based currency, I'm very positive about the idea of having mainstream apps such as Whatsapp and Messenger introduce the concept of paying with your phone without needing to link your accounts with any bank account or debit/credit card, because the money is in theory being held by your device (under the hood, just holding a private key of…

What's the point of public/private keys if the whole thing can be reversed, recovered and changed by FB with no transparency for the outside world? The private key becomes just a better password, like a SSH key based authentication. Actually I'm pretty sure the wallet will not even require any key. You will be able to sign in with facebook. I see no P2P payments here as everything is really validated by FB and all th…

> What's the point of public/private keys if the whole thing can be reversed, recovered and changed by FB?

Less possibility for fraud via identity-stealing. Merchants will not need to see/store your private keys anymore to receive payments.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#146

Post by luckylion »

alangibson wrote: post #139
aogaili wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll take a pass but the majority of the people won't so most likely you'll end up using it.

The average civilian associates cryptocurrencies with high profile thefts and dark web drug dealers because that's what makes it into the mainstream media. At best this will panic the big payment processors into making traditional payment options cheaper and easier, further undermining what little reason this has for existing.

> The average civilian associates cryptocurrencies with high profile thefts and dark web drug dealers because that's what makes it into the mainstream media.

That will change now that major corporations have vested interests in changing the opinion of the public on cryptocurrencies.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#147

Post by hombre_fatal »

alangibson wrote: post #139
aogaili wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll take a pass but the majority of the people won't so most likely you'll end up using it.

The average civilian associates cryptocurrencies with high profile thefts and dark web drug dealers because that's what makes it into the mainstream media. At best this will panic the big payment processors into making traditional payment options cheaper and easier, further undermining what little reason this has for existing.

> The average civilian associates cryptocurrencies with high profile thefts and dark web drug dealers

Maybe the average dismissive HN comment.

But pretty much everyone I ever talk to outside of HN treats Bitcoin with distant "hmm, maybe I'll learn more about that one day" curiosity. Kind of like programming and other tech.

You are way over-estimating how much Bitcoin even shows up on the radar of average people, even if it were 100% bad news.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#148

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

This seems to be Facebooks WeChat play. It makes absolute sense for them to do this and there is very little friction for onboarding.

I can see them adding contracts (rental for example) to the chain at some point.

Validators are hand picked. So it‘s distributed but no really that much. Again, it makes sense from a business perspective. But it‘s certainly expanding FBs power and influence as a platform even more. I can see this getting pretty crazy in developing countries where FB might be the platform for everything at this point. Concerning.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#149

Post by xorcist »

seibelj wrote: post #118

I 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…

Haven't you got it the other way around?

This looks very much like what people usually mean with "can't this be done with a database?". Singular data view, high capacity, permissioned.

The strange thing here is the hand waving about transitioning to PoS in the future. How would that work, exactly?

And, in that case, why not use a more traditional database?

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#150

Post by berbec »

tomglynch wrote: post #26
ilaksh wrote: post #12

It 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…

So we can take it down from the inside, trojan-horse style!

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!
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