I hope it crashes and burns. It's the opposite of what crypto was meant to achieve. No central control.
Build something better that will get more adoption then?
It's called Ethereum.
Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#282So Mark Z. wants me to buy his Chuck-E-Cheese(c) tokens, then see where I spend them. /s
In all seriousness, are they offsetting the coin generation with windmills, sea turbines, or geothermal plants? How much power is being consumed by FB and the small handful of banks that are cranking out these tokens?
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#283It’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…
> That sounds amazingly dystopian. I mean, that’s literally a money built on an oligarchy. By design. What's actually far more dystopian is the power that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal already have. It's not getting worse with this new thing, it's getting better . Nobody has to use Libra, but getting by without access to Visa/Mastercard/Paypal is a real problem for businesses.
I'm all for equalling the playing field. But Libra doesn't expand the choices on the menu: Would I rather eat curry that tastes like shit, or eat shit that tastes like curry? Sorry for my lack of enthusiasm.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#284> "Libra’s mission is to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people."
Command line demo/testnet. yea everyone can use it /s
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#285If 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…
> If this succeeds, it will be a data collection tool the likes of which the world has never seen
I'm pretty sure that this type of data collection tool is in use today by the Chinese government.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#286If 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."
Typical comments from them. It also says they will comply with all AML and KYC requirements and will work directly with governments as required. In other words, to get this crypto you must give them your government ID. The fact that the complete Calibra profile of you will be in a different database than your complete FB profile is meaningless.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#287Terrifying, 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.
> 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
Sure. But think about all the money they can make from selling ads if they know everything that people buy. Doesn't he have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value?
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#288Step 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.
They also say it will be decentralized but they are really only talking about infrastructure not governance or control. This will never be anything but a completely centralized shitcoin (although a very successful one).
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Conceptually this is a bank, but with no interest returned to users, no financial oversight from governments, controlled by Silicon Valley's top companies. I disagree that this is "conceptually" a bank. Facebook's business model isn't lending out the reserves. If it was, banking regulation would apply. Also, in a modern bank, reserves are maybe 10%, and you get less than zero percent interest after inflation for th…
> We've all seen in the past on how well "financial oversight" worked It worked remarkably well - no consumer lost their deposits to a bank failure. The fact that banks lent out too much money had no impact on consumer deposits, thanks to oversight.
> The fact that banks lent out too much money had no impact on consumer deposits, thanks to oversight.
I like how you're trying to make like the financial crash was no big deal because this 'oversight' worked in this narrow context.
I wonder if you'd claim that the banks lending out too much money didn't have absolutely catastrophic effects on the economy in general and by association, millions of people's livelihoods around the globe.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#290I'd argue that credit cards are conceptually not very different. Users pay the fees both directly (annual costs, interest) and indirectly (increased prices due to vendor fees), and the shareholders reap the benefits.
Just like credit cards, and the various digital currencies like Bitcoin (where exchanges have plenty of regulation and reporting requirements to deal with!), this will be subject to regulation and governmental oversight.
Note that I'm not a fan of this at all, due to the company behind it.
But it's not a groundbreaking new concept, or very scary if seen in isolation.