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Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#571

Post by ur-whale »

amasad wrote: post #226

Private money is not a new thing. In fact, the predecessor to paper money was retail bank issued notes. I think it's still the case in Scotland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_Scotland The concept of nationalized central banks is new.

> The concept of nationalized central banks is new.

And it's still pretty unclear if those are a good idea at all.

According to this guy, the average lifespan of a national currency is 27 years: https://www.dinardirham.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-fiat-curren...

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#573

Post by w1nst0nsm1th »

hjk05 wrote: post #100
sins wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at?

I tried to buy a cup of coffee recently at a bitcoin only cafe. Though I didn’t end up paying with bitcoin because it took a day for the bitcoin atm deposit to clear. So I asked a friend who worked in the building to spot me a cup of coffee, and he paid... by making a line on a piece of paper they used to do bookkeeping denoted in fiat because no-one wanted to go through the hassle of bitcoin transfers and no one had…

Bitcoin is more like "gold coin" currency, regarding its volatility at least. Its use cases as everyday currency are more or less limited to illegal drugs.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#575

Post by 0xDEFC0DE »

jpmattia wrote: post #546

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.

Can you explain why the ledger being run by ~27 different entities is NOT decentralized?

How many governing entities (or validators; or people running blockchain servers) do you need before it qualifies as decentralized?

I'm wondering about your definitions, not defending Facebook here.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#576

Post by an_d_rew »

vivekd wrote: post #557

This is an interesting story and I would like to learn more about libra-coin. Unfortunately I think hackernews has a strong anti-facebook bias that is making the opinions here nearly universally one sided. I think we can say three things fairly uncontroversially in favor of this 1. The world could use an online independent currency 2. Adding stability to blockchain currencies and having that work on a large scale is…

Well, perhaps a deep exploration of the pros and cons are warranted, but...

FB has been caught willfully and negligently lying multiple times. (And yes, I'm aware that many banks have done the same.) Nonetheless, why would I choose to trust them over any other payment system?

What's Zuck's testimony to Congress going to be in five years? "We could have done better. We will do better. Who could have forseen this nightmare mess...?"

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#577

Post by gridlockd »

elliekelly wrote: post #235
gridlockd wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bunch of nonsense. Actual banks are corporations like Facebook and they're far scarier .

Our banking system certainly leaves a lot to be desired but I’d take Bank of America over Facebook pretending to be a bank 100% of the time. And I have never said a nice thing about BoA in my life. What’s scarier to me is that Facebook is deliberately and admittedly targeting the unbanked - the people most in need of a bank but also the people most at risk of being taken advantage of. I’m afraid this will be the sili…

> Our banking system certainly leaves a lot to be desired but I’d take Bank of America over Facebook pretending to be a bank 100% of the time

Facebook isn't pretending to be bank. Facebook is pretending to be a payment processor. What's the big deal?

Nobody is telling you to put all your savings into a centralized cryptocurrency, especially considering you're a US citizen with access to relatively good banking system.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#578

Post by ur-whale »

One really interesting issue is how they are actually going to make the zucbux actually stable.

This seems like a straightforward problem to solve: for every zucbux in circulation, stash a euro, a yen and a USD somewhere.

Except ... where do you actually stash those? In what financial institution? And how do you know said custodian is risk-free? Who is going to audit them to independently guarantee that the underlying funds actually exist?

As it turns out, the only entities that can somewhat securely provide that service are central banks themselves, and that means they have to be willing to play ball.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#579

Post by apazzolini »

dmje wrote: post #542

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.

I'm going to choose to view this in a positive light as it's a great indicator of where to not spend money. I find company values to be an increasingly important factor when choosing who to patronize.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#580

Post by vgoh1 »

dmje wrote: post #542

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.

Exactly why I would love to see this fail. I try to be a non-Facebook user, but everyone uses Messenger, and my local Craigslist has deteriorated because everyone sells on Facebook now, so I use it for certain things. Every once in a while, I find myself getting sucked into the "feed" view on my way to the Facebook Marketplace, especially since on mobile, every time I press "back" from a listing that I go into details on, it takes me back, not to the listings that I was looking at, but to the news feed. Facebook knows exactly what they are doing.
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