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Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

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Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#301

Post by heimatau »

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 of course a gross misunderstanding of what banks are, what they do, why they do it and where they come from.

You're being overly reductionist.

The functions of banks are great and valuable but they are disproportionately so. Why? Because they get free money from the Fed and are using fractional reserves.

Do you think the Bank's services would be as pervasive if the working class had a stable store of value for their work? I don't. Banks need competition and with Bitcoin and the crypto space, they finally got some serious competition.

Also, there are plenty of startups in the cryptocurrency space that ARE doing functions that banks offer. SALT is one that comes to mind quickly but there are plenty of others.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#302

Post by sprafa »

aserafini wrote: post #182
sprafa wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree governments will try to ban fixed supply currencies but I don't believe they will succeed. China still can't stop its citizens accessing the open internet on VPN. North Korea still can't stop its citizens smuggling wikipedia into the country on USB sticks. Governments won't be able to stop citizens storing their wealth in fixed supply currencies. > Bitcoin currently is actually heavily manipulated/moved by Te…

It was an article on hacker news. I cba to find it but will link if I do. Of course it’s important to provide sources.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#303

Post by z3c0 »

Conjoiner wrote: post #282
z3c0 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of, yeah. It would be 51% of verification nodes. If you bought 51% of all Bitcoin, but it was verified by everybody else in the network, you don't actually have any power to decide if your transactions were valid or not. If you controlled 51% of the nodes, you would have majority control over which transactions are valid.

it's not 51% of the nodes, it's 51% of the hashing power together with following the agreed upon rules of the network

You're correct. I oversimplified it quite a bit.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#304

Post by profalseidol »

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.

As others have explained, it's arguable that banks cannot do this. Though I am curious if there some way to outlaw cryptocurrency, possible go as far as impose sanctions to other countries.

Also, would like to note that Bitcoin can also function as store of value just like Gold.

Any news about Lightning? Is that running live now?

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#305

Post by profalseidol »

CodiePetersen wrote: post #224
sprafa wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lol, we a major consumer bank here that have "system error" and everyone's payday salary is mixed up. I imagine some miserable dev tasked to run a batch script and forgot to do some steps.

For sure these banks wouldn't use their own hardware, but hire a new team, new hardware etc.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#306

Post by profalseidol »

yingw787 wrote: post #191
abecedarius wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how your point of view conflicts with the parent's. Are you saying that yes, power over money can be used to tyrannical ends, but real tyrants needn't bother?

What I'm getting at is in closed societies, power and money are different things. In open societies, money is power. Parent says government control over money incentivizes authoritarianism. I'm arguing authoritarians have no need to control money to exercise power, because they have multiple ways to do the latter. For instance, during the Cold War the Soviet ruble was not convertible to U.S. dollars or British pounds…

I'd like to add. I think the 'open society' mentioned is simply not an opposite to 'closed society'. Imo, there is a big spectrum to how closed or open a society is.

How open a society is, are efforts mostly paid in blood by the plebians. Those who look down on others and want control are the ones who probably makes society more 'closed'.

Money is only a tool. A way to facilitate immoral exchange of earth's finite resources + human labour.

My leftist ideals would say, we shouldn't deny a fellow human access to food or a vacation just because he doesn't have anything in exchanges. Especially today that we have a problem of overbundance, and we are not even optimizing our production, but for profit.

The Anthropologist David Greaber in his book, we can observe this human compassion when in the park when some stranger kid is in danger, maybe drowning, we do not hesitate for a sec to help out, and we don't ask for anything in return.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#307

Post by camgunz »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #299
camgunz wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not my position. I do believe that BTC would also go for $3. But the only reason is that holders of BTC have so far managed to convince holders of other currencies that BTC has some intrinsic worth when, in fact, it has none (other than money laundering, frankly, which is no small thing, but not something people should be investing in). That's why I believe it doesn't belong in the same category as commoditie…

But there's no such thing as "intrinsic worth"... It's all about supply and demand!

Nah I don't buy that (oooh econ pun!). There are basic human needs: food, water, shelter, medicine, socialization. Goods and services that fulfill those needs have intrinsic worth (to humans). When those goods and services are valued primarily in a given currency (i.e. GBP, USD, EUR), that currency gains worth rooted in the intrinsic worth of those goods and services.

And even abstract financial instruments like mortgages, REITs, bonds, CDSs, CDs, shares of commodities, etc. are based on these fundamental things. Bonds are based on currencies--which are only worth anything if they're the primary denomination of goods/services with intrinsic worth. REITs, mortgages, etc. represent shelter. Commodities represent food, water, and medicine.

BTC represents... nothing? Energy loss? Honestly there's no analog. Snake oil is still oil, selling someone air--they still get air. And sure, you can still argue "well camgunz, even if it's literally nothing, if people want it, they'll put a price on it". But... isn't that really just super bad, like collapse of the civilization bad if it ever gets to scale? We really shouldn't be convincing people to turn their money into absolutely nothing. That seems very obviously not a good idea.

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#308

Post by dandandaml »

headsoup wrote: post #263
dandandaml wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's digital colonialism. Opposed to the European-originated paper trading system Libra isn't colonialism, it is competition.

What is the competition for? What outcome is Libra competing for?

>What is the competition for?

to get users

>What outcome is Libra competing for?

somebody creates money, zucc wants to be that guy

Re: Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game

#309

Post by BlueTemplar »

camgunz wrote: post #307
BlueTemplar wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's no such thing as "intrinsic worth"... It's all about supply and demand!

Nah I don't buy that (oooh econ pun!). There are basic human needs: food, water, shelter, medicine, socialization. Goods and services that fulfill those needs have intrinsic worth (to humans). When those goods and services are valued primarily in a given currency (i.e. GBP, USD, EUR), that currency gains worth rooted in the intrinsic worth of those goods and services. And even abstract financial instruments like mort…

The worth of "food, water, shelter, medicine, socialization", financial instruments (including cryptocurrencies) depends on context. For instance water might be extremely precious in some situations (if you're dying of thirst), and have zero, or even negative value in others (like during a flood, because you want to get rid of excess water, even if if by some miracle it happened to stay pure). Hence, no "intrinsic" worth.
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