Great name that's not going to create any confusion in those Spanish speaking countries that call the Pound "Libra" (hence the £ as the sign, by the way).
Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#382I think a lot of people are missing the point:
All they need to do is to have 1%+ cheaper fee than cards.
And no matter people's ideals, all businesses will add it.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#383"it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks." from the whitepaper: https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-... It's like one to one copy of the traditional monetary system with speed of transactions improved. The volatility of low-volatile assets still contradictive in…
Your tone is too cynical, this is exactly what it is and what payment processors have been dreaming of for years. A banking system where money can be moved instantly without weird batching, holidays, manual intervention, and all the rest of the legacy crap that plagues current banking. I'm all for it!
I also can use it for buying a coffee or sending payments across border directly and I appreciate already the developers and managers behind it but people die and suffer for the sake of "low volatile assets" for years. Speed or functionality may be problematic previously but we have much deeper and important problems which can only be solved by contributions of companies like Facebook. That's why I'm uttering this here.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#384Terrifying, really. The world is hurdling back towards a feudalist society, with corporations instead of kings.
No. Your ideas of what 'feudalism' implies are totally wack and ahistorical. Feudalism was a time of laissez-faire, political liberty and anarchism. "The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal" was the motto of feudalism. It was a reaction against the centralization and coercion of the old Roman Empire. How is this anything like Facebook et al?
What I meant is a civilization where only the powerful have a say, and regular people become serfs to powerful, warring organizations. Which, yeah, I guess isn't very well articulated by the word "feudal".
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#385Libra, 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.
A minor correction: librae, solidi, denarii. Solidi were so called, according to wikipedia, because (at first) they were solid gold.
Solidus would also be a decent name for a stablecoin!
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#386Terrifying, really. The world is hurdling back towards a feudalist society, with corporations instead of kings.
No. Your ideas of what 'feudalism' implies are totally wack and ahistorical. Feudalism was a time of laissez-faire, political liberty and anarchism. "The vassal of my vassal is not my vassal" was the motto of feudalism. It was a reaction against the centralization and coercion of the old Roman Empire. How is this anything like Facebook et al?
He’s sketching out a main point that a few are subjugating the rest using some sort of apportioned rights (in this case, runaway technological inertia and money leading to a positive feedback loop of even more inertia)
I think you’re missing the forest for the trees by concentrating on the historical robustness of his feudalism reference
My immediate thought was that he meant something more like corporate city states ala cyberpunk themes presciented by blade runner and shadowrun
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#387It’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. IMO, it's a small step towards a better direction. The "validator" consensus (oligarchy) is a much more transparent/inclusive solution compared to the closed financial ecosystems of Wechat/Alipay/Paytm/Grab. If Libra is an oligarchy, closed financial systems are dictatorships
> If Libra is an oligarchy, closed financial systems are dictatorships
You are on the right path, don't stop there :-)
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#388> Facebook says its “stablecoin,” will empower billions and underpin a stunningly ambitious global economy, without selling your data. I wonder how many millions of people were drinking their favorite beverage while reading this and spat it out on whatever/whoever was in front of them! It’s astonishing that after all these years and all the scandals, they’re deluded enough to write such lines with a straight face. Th…
Yeah, I'm going to guess #corporatecoin will die from a thousand regulatory papercuts, because they won't be able to prevent criminal activity without exerting draconian control over the payment network, and then it will be too inconvenient for anyone to use.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#389From the white paper: > "Libra’s mission is to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people." They do this by issuing coins in exchange for fiat money, which is held by the reserve. > "Interest on the reserve assets will be used to cover the costs of the system, ensure low transaction fees, pay dividends to investors who provided capital to jumpstart the ecosystem [...…
All these years of being a staunch techno libertarian and this what we end up with. I’m embarrassed, I thought it would be different.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#390It's amazing how short of a memory people have. The financial system has at least a few centuries of experience and todays regulatory climate is a reflection of the lessons learned. To some, these rules may seem arbitrary and they sometimes are but people forget how things before.
I find it amusing that the big selling point behind the initial round of cryptocurrency was its lack of regulation.