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Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

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Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#101

Post by sprafa »

simias wrote: post #74
gooseus wrote: post #45

> The largest leap will come last: Libra as a genuine currency, not simply a medium for transaction. This will be function of volume in the previous two use cases, and is understandably concerning to governments all over the world. Well that's certainly an understatement. This is literally the only mention of government through-out the entire article. The only mention of banks is in the previous paragraph stating the…

>I really don't know why this isn't a larger part of this conversation. That's been the elephant in the room ever since Satoshi published its paper more than a decade ago. When I discuss with cryptocurrency enthusiasts I often get the impression that they think that banks are this kind of useless parasite body that somehow appears like mosquitoes around a pond in summer. That they only serve to basically operate ATMs…

This is one of the reasons I dropped out of crypto for years, most of its supporters were completely delusional and tragically uninformed about actual banks.

I always considered two datapoints to be fulcral A) ease of use, which Bitcoin has never had and B) potential to be overtaken by an actual bank and twisted into whatever purposes it wanted due to the 51% error. That is, how hard would be it for JPMorgan or Deustche Bank to just buy 51% of Bitcoin and make it do whatever they wanted? I could never see the potential for either fact to be avoided, as much as the frothing Bitcoin-enthusiasts would like it to.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#102

Post by ilaksh »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
Pamar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit early to tell but... do you lose access to FB, whatsapp or whatever when your computer/smartphone gets infected? Or are you talking about malware designed to transfer money from your account to someone else's? Is this a problem for Paypal?

Centralised systems like paypal can just un-transfer the money; for the other examples, you can usually get the account back through some out-of-band account recovery process. For a decentralised system, you're on your own. It's not clear which one Libra really is.

Libra is a centralized system, sponsored by payment processors, masquerading as a decentralized system.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#103

Post by svd4anything »

yingw787 wrote: post #94
tlb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oligopolies do sometimes end when conditions change. People once thought that TV news, highly regulated by the government, would have an indefinite monopoly. Credit cards irritated incumbent banks in the 60s. It’s not inconceivable that banking’s control of money could end.

When you're talking about using a different currency, you're not replacing Bank of America or JPMorgan Chase. You're replacing the Federal Reserve, Bretton Woods, and the U.S. government. Government's grasp on what money should mean is one of the primary ways democratic governments exercise power.

> Government's grasp on what money should mean is one of the primary ways democratic governments exercise power.

Could you explain that statement? I can’t help but counter that isn’t often the government’s control of money that enables the rise of authoritarian governments! Perhaps privatization of currency might strengthen democracy not undermine it.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#104

Post by hvhsb »

camgunz wrote: post #30
padobson wrote: post #9

I can't help but think that Facebook doomed this "distributed ledger" possibility by trying to be first to market with a tarnished brand. The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China. I can't imagine the possibility for prosperity when 3 billion consumers enter…

> The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China. I hear this a lot in cryptocurrency threads, and I vehemently disagree. There's no doubt that using "some other currency" (currency or cryptocurrency) is better than using a corrupt, authoritarian regime's currenc…

>Not being able to control the supply of currency your goods (or others' goods, i.e. petrodollars) are valued in is a huge disadvantage.

Ask the poor countries of the EU, which have been ripped off by the rich countries for decades now.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#105

Post by YorkshireSeason »

adventured wrote: post #84
gooseus wrote: post #45

> The largest leap will come last: Libra as a genuine currency, not simply a medium for transaction. This will be function of volume in the previous two use cases, and is understandably concerning to governments all over the world. Well that's certainly an understatement. This is literally the only mention of government through-out the entire article. The only mention of banks is in the previous paragraph stating the…

> No government is going to let FB and any coalition do an end run around their national currency and their banking institutions. That's the point of confusion. This is not an end around. This is about extracting tolls - slivers - from economic activity. They will all comply with the status quo, they will say what needs to be said, they will bow as they need to bow, they merely want to get their little cut on a billi…

Very perceptive!

Just today, Nick Clegg, former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and currently Vice-President for Global Affairs and Communications at Facebook, explicitly asks for FB to be regulated [1]: "We need governments and policymakers to engage with issues like these and help set the parameters for us".

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/sir-nick-clegg-link-between-socia...

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#107

Post by sprafa »

aserafini wrote: post #79
camgunz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China. I hear this a lot in cryptocurrency threads, and I vehemently disagree. There's no doubt that using "some other currency" (currency or cryptocurrency) is better than using a corrupt, authoritarian regime's currenc…

Regarding a country’s ability to manipulate their own currency or execute monetary policy which is mostly in the direction of printing more: the end game of crypto seems to take this option off the table for all governments in the long term. Why? Because assuming all other things being equal (convenience as medium of exchange etc.), an individual is always going to prefer holding currency that isn’t subject to inflat…

Governments can easily ban and pursue anti-crypto measures to prevent anything such as money they can't control.

Yannis Varoufakis said it best: the idea of apolitical money is a fiction and a dream. Money has always been associated to and controlled by governments. Bitcoin currently is actually heavily manipulated/moved by Tether which is controlled by Bitfinex.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#108

Post by jpkiser »

simias wrote: post #74
gooseus wrote: post #45

> The largest leap will come last: Libra as a genuine currency, not simply a medium for transaction. This will be function of volume in the previous two use cases, and is understandably concerning to governments all over the world. Well that's certainly an understatement. This is literally the only mention of government through-out the entire article. The only mention of banks is in the previous paragraph stating the…

>I really don't know why this isn't a larger part of this conversation. That's been the elephant in the room ever since Satoshi published its paper more than a decade ago. When I discuss with cryptocurrency enthusiasts I often get the impression that they think that banks are this kind of useless parasite body that somehow appears like mosquitoes around a pond in summer. That they only serve to basically operate ATMs…

Yes, there are many Bitcoiners who believe that everyone will become their own bank but I believe a more common sentiment is the idea off full backed reserved. But a great I feel that a more common belief held by Bitcoiners is that the "inherent" issues with capitalism come from fractional reserve banking. Now for the first time in history there is a form of money that you can prove in a matter of seconds that your money didn't move when you gave custody to the bank. In fact with multisignature transactions banks would simply act as a escrow service for those, I imagine a most people, who do not feel comfortable managing their own keys.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#110

Post by duguxu »

svd4anything wrote: post #81
duguxu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People living in these country here. Thank you for pointing out these concerns. Besides currency manipulation, another issue with cryptocurrency is about responsibility and accountability. For traditional central bank, before a greedy bad policy made, local governors must carefully think about the aftermath like unrest and they might be held for account and get punished. In the worst scenario, people keep the choice…

> But this is not the case for cryptocurrency. There might be no one punished for terribly wrong decision, just because the public have no idea who the decision maker is, or he/she is in another country and escapes the rule of law. Just like 1997 financial crisis for southeast asian people. What kind of “decision” are you imagining? I thought part of the point of cryptocurrencies is to remove power to even have these…

I don’t know if i’m correct on this. but i think members of the libra have the power to manipulate exchange rate more or less, although they might choose not to use it. Also, upgrading cryptocurrency with improper algorithm or parameters could influence the market, targeting certain countries for instance.

There are decisions in cryptocurrency. and they are “democratically” made in the computing power sense, which means, as a less computationally powerful country, it might lose policy independence in the global voting.

For gold, there would be much less space for policies, both good and bad, and hence less benefits and problems at the same time. I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s not widely adopted anymore.

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