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Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

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Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#11

Post by TheRealPomax »

DiseasedBadger wrote: post #7
TheRealPomax wrote: post #6

My main concern about libra is that, by being strongly tied to real currencies, libra issuers (not just facebook, all of them) have effectively assumed the role of unsanctioned mints, with the ability to damage the stability of each currency because libra is not tied to the international exchange system: if you pay facebook, or anyone else, $10 and they convert that into libra, now they have $10 that they will absolu…

What about that makes it better to be embargoed by Facebook? That's a dystopia no one needs.

What about Libra is exclusive to Facebook? It's not "their" cryptocurrency, they just pitched the idea. The actual power behind libra is the Libra Association, which has a lot more scary companies participating.

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#12

Post by politician »

traek wrote: post #8
TheRealPomax wrote: post #6

My main concern about libra is that, by being strongly tied to real currencies, libra issuers (not just facebook, all of them) have effectively assumed the role of unsanctioned mints, with the ability to damage the stability of each currency because libra is not tied to the international exchange system: if you pay facebook, or anyone else, $10 and they convert that into libra, now they have $10 that they will absolu…

This is how every bank works.

Fractional reserve banking usually requires some non-zero percentage of deposits to be withheld.

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#13

Post by buboard »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #6

My main concern about libra is that, by being strongly tied to real currencies, libra issuers (not just facebook, all of them) have effectively assumed the role of unsanctioned mints, with the ability to damage the stability of each currency because libra is not tied to the international exchange system: if you pay facebook, or anyone else, $10 and they convert that into libra, now they have $10 that they will absolu…

But i thought each libra must be backed by real money? i.e. when they sell 10 libra the 10 dollars go to the libra fund, and cant really circulate (but can be invested)

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#14

Post by TheRealPomax »

traek wrote: post #8
TheRealPomax wrote: post #6

My main concern about libra is that, by being strongly tied to real currencies, libra issuers (not just facebook, all of them) have effectively assumed the role of unsanctioned mints, with the ability to damage the stability of each currency because libra is not tied to the international exchange system: if you pay facebook, or anyone else, $10 and they convert that into libra, now they have $10 that they will absolu…

This is how every bank works.

Yes, and banks are bound by incredibly tight laws, including laws around not being allowed to recirculate all the money you get as part of an exchange operation.

If all the Libra association members are willing to be bound by the same laws, then cool: but do you trust Vodafone, or Facebook, or Andreessen Horowitz, to not try to bend the rules so they can make more money?

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#16

Post by TheRealPomax »

buboard wrote: post #13
TheRealPomax wrote: post #6

My main concern about libra is that, by being strongly tied to real currencies, libra issuers (not just facebook, all of them) have effectively assumed the role of unsanctioned mints, with the ability to damage the stability of each currency because libra is not tied to the international exchange system: if you pay facebook, or anyone else, $10 and they convert that into libra, now they have $10 that they will absolu…

But i thought each libra must be backed by real money? i.e. when they sell 10 libra the 10 dollars go to the libra fund, and cant really circulate (but can be invested)

But without Facebook (or any of the Libra association members that aren't already financial institutions) starting a bank, and then for obvious reasons being forced by law to split that off from their parent company as an independent entity, why would anyone expect banking laws to apply?

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#17

Post by buboard »

DiseasedBadger wrote: post #9
conanbatt wrote: post #2

After 10 years of the crypto-crazies of bitcoin denouncing the power of central banks, a private company announces to do a version of a crypto-currency and is under fire from a central bank. Clearly they got something right.

Nothing about Libra denounces the power of central banks. Facebook just becomes an unregulated central bank.

if it did. it would clearly denounce their power. the US has waged many wars over the Dollar.

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#18

Post by asveikau »

conanbatt wrote: post #2

After 10 years of the crypto-crazies of bitcoin denouncing the power of central banks, a private company announces to do a version of a crypto-currency and is under fire from a central bank. Clearly they got something right.

Alternatively, a private entity which is typically described as under-regulated in its existing businesses thinks it can pivot into central banking without scrutiny.

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#19

Post by nostrademons »

wil421 wrote: post #10
nostrademons wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several crypto projects (some even fairly popular) where we do know who's behind them - Ripple, Stellar, Ethereum, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Tron, EOS, etc. Hell, the core dev team members of Bitcoin itself is public knowledge. I think it's interesting that while crypto was a bunch of hobbyists and startups, it was just a bunch of folks wasting their money, but now that FB is involved it's a threat to the globa…

>someone else will come up with a cryptocurrency that's actually useful You named 8 different digital coins. Why aren’t any of them useful? Why do we need other ones?

It's like any other startup: building a product that's useful enough to get widespread adoption requires nailing a lot of different details. You leave one critical feature off and you don't get adoption. You get all of them right and the product takes off on a hypergrowth curve. It's like how Reddit took off once they added comments, or AirBnB took off once they started taking professional-quality photos. It's not that comments define Reddit (a Reddit with comments but no links or upvoting is a mailing list) or that photos define AirBnB (an AirBnB with photos but no booking, billing, or review systems is a travel blog), but that those were the last critical features needed for success.

Speaking of the platform coins (Ethereum, EOS, Tron), I can think of few critical features they're missing. Scalability is one of them, which Ethereum is working on and EOS has - the network has to support more than 10 TPS. The ability to host a pretty, intuitive UI on the blockchain itself (so that you don't also need to run a website that listens to blockchain events for average users to run your DApp) is another. Discoverability is another, letting ordinary users find useful apps and spread them around.

Re: Fed Chair Jerome Powell Has ‘Serious Concerns’ with Facebook Libra Proposal

#20

Post by buboard »

wil421 wrote: post #3
conanbatt wrote: post #2

After 10 years of the crypto-crazies of bitcoin denouncing the power of central banks, a private company announces to do a version of a crypto-currency and is under fire from a central bank. Clearly they got something right.

If we knew which government, I mean person, created bitcoin would the same apply? Or would the Feds be all over Satoshi Nakamoto? FB has been the subject of several congressional and parliamentary hearings around the globe recently. Why would they not question Libra?

Thats the beauty of decentralization. You can't really blame one person for bitcoin's value today, you have to blame everyone who participates in it (Really, who would the congress question, and what could that person do? take down bitcoin?). While Libra is centralized so single point of failure
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