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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

#141

Post by sedeki »

damnyou wrote: post #109
stale2002 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few crypto currencies are censoring transactions. If we define "decentralized" as "the ability to send transactions that are unlikely to be censored", then pretty much all cryptos fulfill this requirement. Transaction censorship just isn't something that is happening on most cryptos. You can send whatever transactions that you want, and it almost certainly isn't going to be stopped by any centralized parties.

That's not my definition of decentralization, sorry. Censorship resistance is but one of many necessary requirements for me. Another requirement is that no single entity should be able to mine more than a small percentage of coins. A truly decentralized currency would have built-in protections against any sort of concentration of power, whether it's based on the ability to buy electricity in bulk cheaply or based on…

If you had 51% of the CPU power within the Bitcoin network, would you a) choose to cheat with a rather high chance of crashing the exchange rate, or b) use the CPU power to collect rewards while leaving the exchange rate ”unaffected” with probability = 1?

Satoshi considered this scenario.

It is also a public ledger, ie even if you don’t mine it is easy to track everything.

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

#142

Post by helen___keller »

dumbass123 wrote: post #131
jasonhansel wrote: post #110

My concern about Libra is that it suggests that Facebook is trying to control things that have normally been the purview of the government. This is concerning in the long run because Facebook is not run democratically. Any institution performing government-like functions should be at least as accountable as the government itself.

Your concern makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, history has shown that "democratically" controlled currencies are a pretty terrible idea. That's why the ECB, Fed, Bank of Canada, etc. etc. all make a point of being independent of the rest of the government. Second of all, it IS accountable to far more than just "rich people". There's many times of democracies... and one way of breaking it down is democracy by v…

These aren't the same things at all. Words have meanings, and being financially accountable to the public "by exit" does not mean a private corporation is a democracy or a democratically run corporation by even the loosest definitions of these terms

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

#143

Post by sedeki »

ethbro wrote: post #115
seibelj wrote: post #105

Posted this in an older Libra hatefest but I'll post it again: Cryptocurrency and blockchain technology have opened up permissionless innovation in an industry that has been so choked by regulation that previously only the largest, most well-connected players could get in the door: finance. You can, right this second, create a smart contract that allows extremely sophisticated financial instruments and attract real u…

The problems with cryptocurrencies are precisely their lack of laws. Laws link the real world (a thing or action) to an intangible concept (a transaction or a contract). Without a guarantee of that link (ultimately, via force), you're left with joke monopoly money. And if you leverage the existing system to accomplish that link (e.g. via writing legally valid smart contracts), then you're again beholden to government…

How does the situation in Zimbabwe or Venezuela fit into your argument? Seriously.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

bo1024 wrote: post #108
abecedarius wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference that could be important: Libra is effectively a bank, and like other banks creates money, but the new money is not denominated in dollars, it's in Libra. If American banks create too many dollars, that's a problem for every American, since Americans up to now have been pretty much stuck with using dollars. If Libra mismanages their supply and reserves, the main effect will be on the market price…

I think the plan for Libra is always to have its value tied to something stable (USD for sake of argument, but more complex in practice). Each libra would be backed by 1 dollar or whatever. (I'm not sure if the plan is that those dollars have to sit in reserve like some gold standard, but presumably eventually the temptation to use a fractional reserve would be too great.)

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by jpadkins »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
rufusroflpunch wrote: post #39

Of course he does. His job, his entire worldview, is based on technocratic control of the economy. Breaking the government monopoly on currency threatens everything about him.

> Breaking the government monopoly on currency threatens everything about him This is naive. Breaking governments’ holds on currency would be supremely lucrative for bankers. See the American free banking era.

This is also naive. The federal reserve is a joint org of government and banks. There is no separation of government and banking power when it comes to currency in the US. In 1913, they agreed to control it together (run by the banks, oversight by federal government).

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

#146

Post by elisharobinson »

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…

the main reason why facebook went the route of stable coin is simple. What is the main reason for a currency holding value is a correlation between the currency and its military strength. Unlike other commodities which hold intrinsic utility , currencies have enforced utility. Facebook understands why most crypto currencies are volatile cause there is no authority to enforce utility, hence the problem of utility is solved. now comming to the reason why the FED is so strongly oposed to this, if enough people start using libra its a big FU to the US fed cause they cant nuke it without hurting themselves hence they want to kill it right now. For some context this is the same FED which allowed countless acts of financial loot run wild for decades. But now when they realise that its there ass thats on the line they flip out.

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

#147

Post by MrMember »

jasonhansel wrote: post #121
50656E6973 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but central banks like the Fed are not accountable like the government is

The Fed is certainly more accountable than Facebook. The Fed chair is appointed by an elected president; Mark Zuckerberg is appointed by various unelected rich people.

Mark Zuckerberg is appointed by Mark Zuckerberg. He controls a majority of voting rights in the company. If he wanted to he could completely ignore all other shareholders and there isn't a whole lot anyone could do about it.

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

#148

Post by rtkwe »

wcoenen wrote: post #74
rtkwe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investment is circulation though. They are no longer holding the $10 you spent to buy 10 Libra but $10 worth of Apple stock say that definitely isn't always worth $10 and Apple or whoever sold that stock now has $10.

According to the whitepaper at libra.org, they won't hold stocks. The reserve is a "basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities".

There's nothing binding about that proposed setup though. It wouldn't affect the function from the chain side so there's no real way to validate that that is what their doing outside of independent audits.

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

#149

Post by phatfish »

conanbatt wrote: post #132
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the ways that fiat currencies are accepted by the public is that you can use them to pay taxes so even if no one wants to accept them you can be sure that the issuing government will accept it as payment for taxes and government services. So people are assured that at worst there is a place where it can be used. Once FB creates services that people want and then FB decides that they will only accept its curren…

This presents no conflict with a healthy and free society.

Sure, if it is correctly regulated to have no more leverage on our lives than a fancy marketing strategy.

If not then I see a lot of problems with handing even more power from democratically elected governments to the corporate black box.

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

#150

Post by 50656E6973 »

nixonpjoshua1 wrote: post #122
50656E6973 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but central banks like the Fed are not accountable like the government is

Not directly accountable but still much more accountable than Facebook is. Even in a non-elected position there is still a duty to the people and greater good rather than fiduciary duty to shareholders.

The only real way the Fed is accountable to the people and greater good is to the extent that they don't screw the people so obviously and badly that the people (including the police and military) revolt against them, which is the same level of accountability for any dictatorship
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