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Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#271

Post by tryptophan »

osullivj wrote: post #186
ojosilva wrote: post #182

Libra, a new global currency... with an old name! "Libra" is the latin name of what is now known as the "pound" and used in many Latin-rooted languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian come to mind) to refer to pound related currencies, including the British pound sterling ("libra esterlina") and similar currencies from Egypt to Lebanon to Gibraltar pound. It was also behind many discontinued currencies from…

Indeed. Libra, solarii, denarii == pounds, shillings, pennies in the old pre 1970 British system. Sometimes referred to as LSD.

Fun fact, this is also why the british pound has the symbol £.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#272

Post by GrinningFool »

holler wrote: post #47

What do the U.S. and other world governments think of this? The way they're pitching it seems like they want to directly undermine the global financial system.

Combine something like Libra with things like this[1], and we're well on our way to the popular science-fiction trope of multinational corporations having more power than governments.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tech-giant-brings-soft...

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#273

Post by tryptophan »

asaph wrote: post #239

> The aim, then, is to get to 100 new validators by 2020, and achieve something close to 1,000 transactions a second—roughly 200 times the sum Bitcoin can currently handle, and around half the capacity of Visa. My reactions to the above: 1. 1000 transactions per second seems low. This doesn't feel very scalable to me. 2. Visa has capacity to handle only around 2000 transactions per second? I would have assumed it was…

>1000 transactions per second seems low. This doesn't feel very scalable to me.

Yeah, this seems like an issue to me too. It doesn't seem like they have gotten around the problem of "every node needs to verify every transaction". Than again it might not matter if every node is a beefy data center.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#274

Post by asdkhadsj »

renaudg wrote: post #260
moosey wrote: post #233

If this succeeds, it will be a data collection tool the likes of which the world has never seen, which is why so many companies are willing to put their name on it. The data, along with ML/AI, and our contemporary understanding of the human mind, means that this is a major step towards control that we can't understand. Dr. Harari explains it better than I do in "21 Lessons for the 21st Century", but this tool is part…

There is at least this from Zuckerberg's announcement : "Calibra will be regulated like other payment service providers. Any information you share with Calibra will be kept separate from information you share on Facebook."

I wonder if "kept separate from" is meaningfully differently than "unable to be linked to". Ie, if Facebook can figure out how to link their data to your LibraCoin data then this statement is moot.

Keeping data separate is not interesting wording by itself, imo.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#275

Post by LambdaComplex »

Yizahi wrote: post #209

Step 1 - say that your "coin" is not centralized Step 2 - proceed to contradict yourself in the next sentence How the hell is a an obviously centralized system with 3 dozens of privileged entities is not centralized... Also it is not only oligarchy, but completely unaccountable shady oligarchy. Why people continue to "want" it is beyond understanding.

Well, they don't actually say it's "not centralized." They say it "will not be issued by a central party," which it won't--it will be issued by 28 central parties.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#276

Post by Juliate »

mmsimanga wrote: post #238
_bxg1 wrote: post #200

Terrifying, really. The world is hurdling back towards a feudalist society, with corporations instead of kings.

From where I am standing I wonder if this is not reflection of the ineffectiveness of governments. In my part of the world there is a lot more talk about devolution, basically self governance of the different regions. Everyone is sick and tired of decisions being made from the capital city by people who do not have your interests at all.

Then what about decisions from corporations who do not even consider you as a person, or a citizen, but as a consumer?

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#277

Post by jerf »

renaudg wrote: post #260
moosey wrote: post #233

If this succeeds, it will be a data collection tool the likes of which the world has never seen, which is why so many companies are willing to put their name on it. The data, along with ML/AI, and our contemporary understanding of the human mind, means that this is a major step towards control that we can't understand. Dr. Harari explains it better than I do in "21 Lessons for the 21st Century", but this tool is part…

There is at least this from Zuckerberg's announcement : "Calibra will be regulated like other payment service providers. Any information you share with Calibra will be kept separate from information you share on Facebook."

I suspect they are using different definitions of "information", "share", "separate", "Calibra", and "Facebook" than a naive person reading that sentence might expect.

I don't mean that as pure snark; I'm dead serious. The legal definition of all those things, the definitions they can get away with using, and the definitions that a normal person would expect from reading that sentence are probably three very different things.

Plus, along with general lack of confidence in Facebook keeping its mitts off of juicy data given their checkered history, I have even less confidence that the promised wall will be there going forward, and that there won't be an excited, breathless announcement in a year or two about how ecstatic they are to bring you awesome new services powered by the data they're going to get from tearing down that wall and isn't it all just so wonderful.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#278

Post by yumraj »

_bxg1 wrote: post #200

Terrifying, really. The world is hurdling back towards a feudalist society, with corporations instead of kings.

What is even more terrifying is that this is being done by Facebook which has a person like Mark Zuckerberg, who has again and again shown that he has no moral compass and has complete disregard for people privacy rights and by extension other rights, as its dictator, with no real board oversight due to how stocks are structured.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#279

Post by almost_usual »

nofunphil wrote: post #193
tetrisgm wrote: post #22

It’s going to be interesting. “Unlike previous stablecoins, Libra will not be issued by a central party. Instead, Facebook has enlisted 27 fellow Silicon Valley titans—among them PayPal, Visa, Spotify, Mastercard, Uber, and eBay—to operate as preliminary “validator nodes” who will each share a transparent copy of a vast ledger of transactions reflecting all the activity on the network.” That sounds amazingly dystopia…

Exactly. What this does is create a wide open space for a "anti-establishment" crypto payments system. But one that people actually understand and trust. Fiat will likely be UOA for stage one of the transition to crypto. But as more people get educated we'll move to fully Open payments. Many will use Libra. But many will use other services. It's not binary. Multiple winners will emerge. Brand identity will be huge he…

This is dumb branding that masquerades control with false decentralization. The biggest opportunity it has is to become a fad amongst teens for a month, or a leech on the poor who don’t have banks. It’s going to fall on its face.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#280

Post by rootsudo »

nofunphil wrote: post #193
tetrisgm wrote: post #22

It’s going to be interesting. “Unlike previous stablecoins, Libra will not be issued by a central party. Instead, Facebook has enlisted 27 fellow Silicon Valley titans—among them PayPal, Visa, Spotify, Mastercard, Uber, and eBay—to operate as preliminary “validator nodes” who will each share a transparent copy of a vast ledger of transactions reflecting all the activity on the network.” That sounds amazingly dystopia…

Exactly. What this does is create a wide open space for a "anti-establishment" crypto payments system. But one that people actually understand and trust. Fiat will likely be UOA for stage one of the transition to crypto. But as more people get educated we'll move to fully Open payments. Many will use Libra. But many will use other services. It's not binary. Multiple winners will emerge. Brand identity will be huge he…

I'm confused at the part of how is Facebook "Anti-establishment?"
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