Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 313 posts

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#221

Post by CodiePetersen »

creato wrote: post #184
panarky wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The reason I stayed in is because Bitcoin solved a seemingly intractable problem, it works in the real world, and it's survived and even thrived in the face of fierce attacks for a decade. Yes, there are many shills who are delusional and ignorant. Yes, specul…

> and it's survived and even thrived in the face of fierce attacks for a decade What fierce attacks has bitcoin faced? Sure, lots of people mock and criticize it, but no real action has been taken. The people criticizing it have just as much influence (or maybe even less) than the delusional and ignorant true believers. To me, a fierce attack would be regulatory action taken by various world governments, but that has…

>>Sure, lots of people mock and criticize it,

Bitcoin and crypto only survive because of trust. There was a time, especially on Bloomberg, when the news was constantly criticising it and sowing mistrust. "It's only used by hackers" or "hit men are murdering people for crypto on the dark web" or "terrorist are funding operations with crypto.". So there have been countless efforts to break the core of what makes a currency valuable.

Additionally, Bitcoin specifically is illegal in several countries, China being one of them. The US has also seized several piles of bitcoin and like they do with other seized assets they put it up for auction. These guys buy the stuff up cheap and immediately sell it. Now that's not a specific attack but it is damaging to prices. Lastly exchanges are requiring photo id to buy things now because of regulation which makes it even harder for people to get into. I can buy bullets and in some cases guns more easily.

So there is actually plenty, not to mention numerous attacks on the network in the early days. Who knows who was behind those.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#222

Post by Macross8299 »

geezerjay wrote: post #127
jpkiser wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

> 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. Why do you believe this has any relevance at all? People want to buy stuff, not exchange bill with serial number #abcxyz with stuff. And from my example you can easily understand why your assertion is quite wrong to begin with.

>Why do you believe this has any relevance at all? People want to buy stuff, not exchange bill with serial number #abcxyz with stuff.

Because it solves the double spend problem [0] associated with digital currency without use of a centralized database.

I think that matters to people trying to avoid onerous capital controls or a government printing 31% of the money supply in a week [1]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-spending

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-05/venezuela...

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#223

Post by Macross8299 »

xxpor wrote: post #90
svd4anything wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really truly settled by economists? Objectively. I mean there have sure been a lot of currency crisis and hyperinflation events in modern world history.

I don't think pure economics are the only thing to worry about here. Anti-money laundering/sanctions/stopping terrorist financing efforts are generally a good thing that not ideal from an economic perspective.

>Anti-money laundering/sanctions/stopping terrorist financing efforts are generally a good thing that not ideal from an economic perspective.

This is the same authoritarian reasoning behind things like China's capital controls, though.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#224

Post by CodiePetersen »

sprafa wrote: post #194
MichaelConlon wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin uses proof of work [1] to verify transactions on the network. For someone to effectively rewrite the network they would need to control 51% of the total computing power (in hashes/sec) on the bitcoin network. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work

I see so I was mistaken about that. I still don’t understand why people don’t see that it would be trivial for a major bank (or now that Bitcoin has grown, a government) to look into making enough computational power they would destroy it.

Banks have decade old hardware and take forever to upgrade software and protocols. You expect them to design a sophisticated attack and run it for however long. On top of that, it would be really easy to find out which bank was doing it and that has huge legal and customer based ramifications. Definitely not worth it.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#225

Post by Macross8299 »

Lordarminius wrote: post #202
sprafa wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw him in person in london and he was asked about Bitcoin. As the last sentence of his answer he said and I’m paraphrasing: “If you’re asking about the idea of apolitical money [in relation to Bitcoin] I think that’s a fantasy”. I’ll try and see if he ever said something similar in other settings but I remember connecting it to what I was reading around the same time which was David Graeber’s Debt: a History book…

I was thinking in part about the bit where you claim bitcoin is manipulated by Tether/Bitfinex

There's a number of people who make this claim, some of them leaning towards more credible [0], some hysterical [1].

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/technology/bitcoin-price-...

[1]: https://medium.com/@bitfinexed

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#226

Post by epiphanitus »

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…

Who's going to control the data that Libra generates?

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#227

Post by Macross8299 »

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…

>Cryptocurrency advocates saying, "we know what's best for you" is super troubling to me.

How is this fundamentally different from an unelected monetary economist working at the IMF or Federal Reserve deciding they know what's best for millions of people in a country? Given that you're presenting a country that can manipulate their own currency as the superior choice.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#228

Post by minderasure »

magnamerc wrote: post #162
wan23 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banks don't make their money or derive their power through the 'creation of money'. A bank just opened and has $0 in the vault You give the bank $1000 The bank lends me $800 Your current bank balance = $1000 My current bank balance = $800 Total money in the bank = $1800 You might say that the money wasn't created because they can't afford to pay out $1800, but if for some reason at this point they need to pay back…

There are now decentralized systems that have monetary policy baked in, where the system can't become under-collateralized, see MakerDAO.

Technically it can become undercollateralized, but there is a recollateralization mechanism through dilution of the MKR token.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#229

Post by CodiePetersen »

sprafa wrote: post #151
tiluha wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are misinformed about how bitcoin works. Bitcoin doesn't care how much of it you have, as it uses Proof-of-Work not Proof-of-Stake. The only thing that matters is you computational power. Now it is true that large banks could just buy lots of ASICs and try to beat the network, but that would mean a continued investment: As soon as they stop mining, the network would return to normal. They can hurt bitcoin…

The transaction rate is deadly in my opinion, not just bad. A year or so ago the rates were running at ridiculous prices. It’s a black eye on the Bitcoin Core that they haven’t fixed this nor do they seem inclined to (the Bitcoin Cash Core seemed convinced they wanted nothing else but to control Bitcoin entirely).

I do agree the transaction rate and fee are horrid. But there are other coins that solve this problem in a dectralized manner. Also there are some block chains that all cross chain atomic swaps. I've been working with a blockchain called Xaya and there is mentions of maybe implementing that as well. I might help on that front after my game is finished. More importantly though. Xaya implements merged mining and you can mine xaya( the coin is called chi) and bitcoin at the same time. So there are not so many problems as people claim or think with crypto.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#230

Post by CodiePetersen »

alanfalcon wrote: post #211
lovecg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then even if you do, you now own a lot of the currency and are in theory incentivized to keep the value from crashing.

Missiles have a lot of value. Crashing them expends that value. Governments still crash missiles into their enemies.

Let's go with a proof of stake coin like tron. They have a 2.5 billion market cap. That's more than all of the pentagons ai budget. Congress was bitching about the f35's 94 million dollar price tag. Do you think they are going to vote to give a budget for not only the attack but the person ell and hardware as well? All for a, according to HN apparently, "insignificant financial threat". Doubtful. Easier to just regulate it with a single pen stroke.
Post reply on HN