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Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#541

Post by solidasparagus »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #485
solidasparagus wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more decentralized than Bitcoin is - there you have 6 pools in control. Global financial systems are expensive and high-reward (not to mention technically challenging since there is not a single proven cryptocurrency that could handle Visa's current TPS - AFAIK). Decentralization makes very little economic sense (at least all the models I've heard so far). True believers forget that normal people have zero int…

No, a pool is not a single entity. That's some bad misinformation.

A mining pool is a group of people coming together to share resources and share rewards. Just like a public corporation. And just like a public corporation, decision making/power is concentrated. Who controls the pay-in/pay-out system? Who decides who can join the pool? Who sets prices? Who gets the pool fees?

Many mining pools have models extremely similar to Uber's business model. Others (including one of the major players) are completely private.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#542

Post by dmje »

Kind of interested in what this means for a non Facebook user. As one of those I already feel sometimes marginalised when content is shared on their walled garden and I need my wife to look at the dates for my kids’ sporting events because they’re only published on Facebook. Now I’m going to be unable to carry out financial transactions, too.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#543

Post by Freak_NL »

twic wrote: post #385
osullivj wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> Solidus would also be a decent name for a stablecoin!

Its inevitable currency symbol is already part of the Unicode standard: /

https://unicode-table.com/en/002F/

An interesting related titbit: the Japanese currency sign for the Yen (¥) used to be encoded as the ASCII backslash (\) in the pre-Unicode era. Japanese fonts simply put the Yen-sign there.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#544

Post by canada_dry »

This and the other recent article about how (in China) it's becoming more and more difficult to do/buy things without wechat makes me think that just as VPN's are popular today, some form of anonymous (non-tracking) e-currency will be all the rage in the future.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#545

Post by dang »

BackBackBack wrote: post #540

For free! Edit: Due to censorship I request you to remove this account since you've not constructed a way to do it ourselves. http://remove.org/removal-requested

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to HN? We're trying for a more thoughtful sort of discussion here.

If you'd read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post in the intended spirit of the site, we'd be grateful. I noticed a thread from a few days ago where this account got involved in a religious flamewar. That's just what we don't want on HN.

You might also find these links helpful for getting the spirit of this site:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html

http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20216561.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#546

Post by jpmattia »

Again: A ledger that is not decentralized is a bank database, not a cryptocurrency.

As near as I can tell, Zuckbucks are nothing more than the JPMorganCryptocurrency but with a bigger consortium. The only difference seems to be who is given write privileges to the database.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#547

Post by H8crilA »

This could pan out. There's a ton of people in the developing world that can only use their phones to get access to any reasonable banking. Or things like ROSCAs [1].

Don't think that tech (whether its a permissionless PoS blockchain or a Ripple copy) is important for success here. Only whether or not an aggressive marketing campaign to make people use it (especially merchants) will succeed.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_savings_and_credit_...

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#549

Post by dmix »

redthrowaway wrote: post #520
dmix wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope that Europe figures out a regulatory framework that works. Is this even possible with complex fast-changing software? They always seem to be busy figuring out last decades issues. Or when they do respond to new things it's usually a FUD-riddled overreaction that just straight up cripples the new things so we're only left with the options that the ordained organizations like Visa and Mastercard come up with.…

Europe sure managed to slay the dragon of those evil cookies what with the banners plastered all over every site forcing you to click a button to close them. Cookies have been around for 25 years and are dead simple, and Brussels failed spectacularly to understand, let alone sensibly regulate, them. Colour me skeptical they'll manage to wrangle something that even the people working on it barely understand, and that'…

Has anyone in EU asked themselves if those banners have accomplished anything besides being a giant waste of time and space having hundreds of millions of people not read the text and automatically clicking x?

I’m not even from EU and I’ve had to click them countless times. And I don’t think I’ve read a single one, even though I’m pretty hardcore when it comes to privacy.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#550

Post by cm11 »

codesushi42 wrote: post #548

Honest question: what will be the incentive for consumers to use Libra over existing solutions like PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo etc?

The biggest is the likelihood that they, and their networks, are already using Facebook. And they're far more likely using Facebook than any of the other services you mentioned.
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