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Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

nytimes.com

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Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#91

Post by rchaud »

lammalamma25 wrote: post #13

Call me dumb for saying this, but I can go to a casino or chuck e. cheese and trade in USD for chips I use at their location. I could take those chips somewhere else if I wanted to and use them with anyone willing to take them. Why is Libra so upsetting? Isn't it the same thing? It seems to me like criticizing Facebook is just the fashionable response to it right now.

The answer is in the article:

> "Jerome H. Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Tuesday that the central bank would be looking at Libra “very carefully” given its potential scale. “I think that our expectations from a consumer protection standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint, are going to be very, very high,”

When Chuck E Cheese becomes one of the world's biggest companies and wants to turn its tokens into legal tender, regulators will be paying attention then too.

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#92

Post by jshowa3 »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #86
jshowa3 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upsetting part, to me anyway, is not that it uses blockchain. It's because: a) not a true crypto-currency because it's centralized b) such currencies are not regulated yet in the slightest c) the centralized authority is a consortium of private corporations of which one, Facebook, is providing the entire infrastructure d) Facebook is known to not handle data appropriately and is not well regulated when it comes t…

Not following why any of this any more upsetting than any product created by one or more private companies or entities. Don’t like it or it’s not for you - don’t use it.

Because banks are insured by the government per FDIC, companies aren't. That's just one example I know of off the top of my head and probably hundreds more I don't know.

Facebook is not just any company either. It holds world wide dominance in marketing, advertising, and communication. It is also accessible through a wide age range. If Libra becomes the only way to interact with Facebook, what do we do about children on Facebook who are often, in the eyes of the law, not able to handle financial responsibility? Due to the current problem with loot boxes and in game gambling in video games, I can see this becoming a problem.

Libra apparently isn't pegged to a specific currency but fluctuating assets that are claimed stable. So if you put 10 fiat currency into Libra, you're not guaranteed to receive or get 10 out (even if we account for a transaction fee) which would normally happen when interacting with a bank and its services. One poor investment by some random company, and your Libra tanks.

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#93

Post by codesushi42 »

davidnoble12 wrote: post #22
codesushi42 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is not a real cryptocurrency (it requires trust) Trustless is not a requirement for a cryptocurrency. PoS requires trust, but still would be a viable consensus mechanism for a cryptocurrency.

eh. This is an oversimplification. I dislike the concept of trustless anyhow. It seems to be misunderstood and misused. Libra is not censorship resistant. This is the major problem with Facebook controlling a large swath of corpokleptocurrency.

Agreed on both points. The oversimplification was intentional, PoS is mostly theoretical right now.

Regardless, Libra still qualifies as a cryptocurrency, even if it's not trustless.

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#94

Post by rootsudo »

CPLX wrote: post #26
lammalamma25 wrote: post #13

Call me dumb for saying this, but I can go to a casino or chuck e. cheese and trade in USD for chips I use at their location. I could take those chips somewhere else if I wanted to and use them with anyone willing to take them. Why is Libra so upsetting? Isn't it the same thing? It seems to me like criticizing Facebook is just the fashionable response to it right now.

You actually can't. Nevada law is explicit that casino chips are not allowed to be used "for any monetary purpose" and federal law prohibits the creation of currencies. Casino chips are highly regulated and only permitted to be used as a stand in for gambling funds where it is permitted. In real life if a casino doesn't think you got a chip from them directly as part of gaming at that casino they won't pay out on it.…

This is correct. South East Asian Casinos were a huge money laundering front because of no KYC or questions.

Not anymore.

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#95

Post by logifail »

ilaksh wrote: post #33

Libra is the best way for payment middlemen and governments to combat cryptocurrency -- by creating something that looks like it and provides some convenience, but removes all of the teeth and allows them to continue to control and profit from it. I am sort of hoping they won't figure that out. But it seems likely that eventually they will. Maybe I should stop saying it's not a real cryptocurrency and stuff, because…

> the dream of digital cash

I'm not sure there is just one dream, though.

Some are dreaming of assets that are stable in the way that (they think) fiat currencies aren't. Some are dreaming of making a lot of money buying low and selling high. Some are dreaming of being off the grid (yet it seems to be really hard to get that right). The list goes on and on.

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#96

Post by JaleDarvis »

StavrosK wrote: post #83
woah wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole network got taken down a couple months ago when a server run by the Stellar company crashed. Not very decentralized. https://cointelegraph.com/news/stellar-node-outage-causes-tw...

Oh wow, that's terrible. Yeah, that's not decentralized at all, too bad... EDIT: It looks like it can be decentralized, just nobody is running any nodes apart from the foundation. I wonder if that's because there isn't enough incentive, or that people just don't trust them. Either way, it's bad.

Check out Hashgraph

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#97

Post by MaxBarraclough »

CPLX wrote: post #26
lammalamma25 wrote: post #13

Call me dumb for saying this, but I can go to a casino or chuck e. cheese and trade in USD for chips I use at their location. I could take those chips somewhere else if I wanted to and use them with anyone willing to take them. Why is Libra so upsetting? Isn't it the same thing? It seems to me like criticizing Facebook is just the fashionable response to it right now.

You actually can't. Nevada law is explicit that casino chips are not allowed to be used "for any monetary purpose" and federal law prohibits the creation of currencies. Casino chips are highly regulated and only permitted to be used as a stand in for gambling funds where it is permitted. In real life if a casino doesn't think you got a chip from them directly as part of gaming at that casino they won't pay out on it.…

> federal law prohibits the creation of currencies

I'm reminded of the 'Liberty Dollar', a 'private currency' that ended in a raid by the FBI and Secret Service. It didn't help their case that their coins looked suspiciously similar to real US currency, mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollar_(private_curren...

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#98

Post by ryanlol »

dageshi wrote: post #85
ryanlol wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re misrepresenting things. Credit card fraud is not terrorism. There’s a plenty of illegal activity related to Valve games, but it’s not the kind mentioned in the parent (drug trade, terrorism, human trafficking). Not at any meaningful scale anyway.

I'm not talking about credit card fraud. Drug dealer has cash, drug dealer buys Steam gift cards from local 7-11 (or physical stores that carry them) and uses it to load into Steam. Steam has a marketplace, dealer buys hats/skins and then sells them for real money transferred by paypal e.t.c. via the various 3rd party sites that do that kind of thing. Cash is now converted to money in a bank account without ever goin…

So you’re personally aware of drug dealers who are doing this?

Why wouldn’t they just use some of the many cheaper and simpler methods of getting cash into digital currency?

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#99

Post by lacker »

pjc50 wrote: post #36
lammalamma25 wrote: post #13

Call me dumb for saying this, but I can go to a casino or chuck e. cheese and trade in USD for chips I use at their location. I could take those chips somewhere else if I wanted to and use them with anyone willing to take them. Why is Libra so upsetting? Isn't it the same thing? It seems to me like criticizing Facebook is just the fashionable response to it right now.

This is actually a very valid question - what is the difference between a company token, a casino chip, a "reward point", company scrip, gift cards, Steam account balances, Steam hats, unlicensed money transmitters, hawala banks, bearer bonds, Jaffa cakes, e-gold, Liberty reserve, Scottish banknotes, shadow banks, Libera, Canadian Tyre money, the Black Sheep Bank, a piece of paper with "IOU £10" written on it, a cheq…

“those that belong to the emperor” - borges reference?

Re: Regulators Have Doubts About Facebook Cryptocurrency, and So Do Its Partners

#100

Post by mtnGoat »

xur17 wrote: post #78
mtnGoat wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most hotel and airline miles allow for C. It might cost a fee to transfer them but that's the same with any monetary transfer. I can sell them as well on a few marketplaces online, so they have an agreed value as well. Most importantly, because I can sell and trade them... Does that not make them mine?

> Most hotel and airline miles allow for C. It might cost a fee to transfer them but that's the same with any monetary transfer. While true, in a lot of cases it ends up costing almost as much as they are worth to transfer them, so I'd argue it's different.

yea, the fees are pretty high. but so are the fees on check cashing for the under banked.
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