Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

1) easier p2p transfer built into apps they have already installed on their devices

2) international transfers are instant and low-cost

3) applepay, venmo and paypal are made for the developed markets. this one targets similar markets where Vodafone has its m-peso

Note this is a first order effect, what I explained above.

The 2nd order effect is that by making more money for the same ad, while your competitors would make less money from the same ad...you can either sit on that profit.

Or you can use your market share and guaranteed profit to make ads less profitable to competitors and this creates a positive feedback cycle where Facebook Ads get more and more market share but other competitors and platforms of Ads gets less and less, which in turn actually allows Facebook to charge more per Ad in the long run (but in the short run Facebook may want to decrease the price per Ad.)

This is bad. Facebook will bake this into their software, even if they claim they won’t do it, they will. It’s no problem because you can always just use fiat right? How are you going to do that when the hoard of idiots out there adopt Libra without considering the long term implications? It could be that if you refuse to use libra, you’ll be left out in the cold. It will be like Facebook all over again. Facebook gets popular in 2007 — hoard of idiots dump all their personal information on it without a single thought about whether or not that’s a smart thing to do — hoards of idiots make Facebook intertwined with life itself without considering how messed up it is — people like me are left out in the cold because we refuse to engage — ten fucking years later people wake up and I’m vindicated — two years later the whole thing apparently is starting again and people are too dumb to see it.

I think the key here as you mention is the "pull through". Previously they could tell which ads generate buzz. The more important metric is which ads generate sales.

I think there's just such a huge opportunity to drive sales through messenger, fb, etc with low-friction payments. They already have the 'best' targeted advertising. They just want to extend their platform all the way through to actual sales. Then they can justify a larger cut than with just the ads.

They've certainly tried payments and money-transfers before. This isn't entirely new territory. It's just very country-specific. They get hit by high transaction fees. No one wants to type their full credit card and address info, then deal with required two-factor authentication in Europe, etc. And nothing is worse than having to forward someone from your app to an unreliable slow desktop-targeted bank page which then sends you an SMS/email that you have to type back into the bank.. etc.

FB is actually right. The credit card system is straight broken from a user-experience point of view. It wasn't created with computers, mobile, or basic security in mind. It's just band-aid on top of band-aids since the 70s. And obviously cash doesn't have much presence online in western countries. FB struggles to get people to buy things through their apps. They desperately want to fix that.

Crypto currencies just work better at a fundamental level with mobile payments. It has always just been a lack of institutional support to get them supported. VISA/MC have probably been looking for a way to leapfrog bitcoin/etherium for some time now. I'm not surprised they jumped on board when a bunch of real technology companies decided to leapfrog them. Otherwise, they'd likely be in for a world of hurt in a few years if something like Apple/Google Credit launched their own without them. It's not like people love VISA/MC as companies. A huge number of people would jump ship so fast if there was literally any other option.