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France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

reuters.com

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Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#41

Post by aazaa »

speps wrote: post #34
aazaa wrote: post #27

> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer I suspect there's a lot more behind this sta…

Your German example is a bit silly to use here given that its exchange rate is 1:1 with euros. There are other regional currencies in other countries, they don't usually operate independently from the country's own currency though.

How so?

The Libra proposal kept its value constant with respect to a basket of currencies.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#42

Post by pjc50 »

baxtr wrote: post #37
Avamander wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has SEPA (Instant). The Chinese have WeChat Pay and similar? I'm curious, what other solutions other countries have?

PayPal?

Not really a bank-to-bank system; money doesn't instantly arrive at the recipient's bank account and paypal's ability to withhold it is notorious.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#43

Post by pjmlp »

mrtksn wrote: post #19
pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make its use a criminal charge.

I'm sure that they keep spare guillotines around but I'm not sure that it would be a popular thing to punish random Louis libra user for his few hundres Euro transaction when Facebook is paying less in taxes than him, figuratively speaking.

Really?

Sadly it is not uncommon to see people going to jail for stealing a few chicken because they were hungry, while many company owners and politicians hardly face any jail time for their proven corruption affairs.

Being popular and law seldom come hand in hand.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#44

Post by throwawaywindev »

aniforprez wrote: post #9
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #2

Best thing I've read on Libra: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/24/971554-facebook-bitcoin...

AH the bit about the goal being to make payments fast makes a ton of sense. The rest of the world has left the US in the dust with extremely fast payments systems. In India, the UPI system has taken the country by storm with direct,instant bank-to-bank money transfers which take seconds to complete and have no fees attached for the consumer

US banks created Zelle, with free instant transfers via your banking app. It’s a shame more people don’t use it. Otherwise people just use credit cards for paying for stuff.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#45

Post by kazen44 »

aazaa wrote: post #41
speps wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your German example is a bit silly to use here given that its exchange rate is 1:1 with euros. There are other regional currencies in other countries, they don't usually operate independently from the country's own currency though.

How so? The Libra proposal kept its value constant with respect to a basket of currencies.

because the german example is tied to the currency used by germany (and the eurozone as a whole).

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#46

Post by mrtksn »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #14
mrtksn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you stop people obtaining it and using it through their buddies on the internet? Is libra tied to an account like game money? AFAIK it's a cryptocurrency? Haven't looked at the details but cryptocurrency implies it stays on some distributed ladger and no 3rd parties have control over the transactions. Isn't that the case?

I'm not sure why you think this is so hard? You pass a law. Most people don't break the law. You make it illegal for banks to transfer to known Libra things. You audit people. You apply big fines. Murder is illegal but that doesn't mean nobody can commit murder .

If Libra becomes a thing, I would guess people will start selling things with it and Europeans will sell their services with Libra if Americans ell their services with Libra.

Maybe in Germany, most people will stay away from it but in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy etc. - in places where people are more "relaxed" about the law enforcement will not miss business opportunities just because their rich neighbours can afford to miss it.

If audits materialize they, the users will simply set-up or use proxies to deal with it. Someone in the USA will set-up an Libra-Bitcoin-Euro-USD exchange for example and the transactions will go through these. I can already see an Ukrainian-Russian-Bulgarian-Romanian-Turkish partnerships to run these operations. Europe is a mess, laws and enfrcement capacity is very different in every country and countries are in multiple clubs(in EU, in EEA, in customs union, in Eurozone, in schengen, not in EU but confirms to EU, not in Eurozone but the currency is pegged to Euro, in EU but not NATO, in NATO but not in the EU. It doesn't have an end) giving differnt rights and different obligations to people in each country and even messier when they are not in their own country or hold multiple citizenships.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#47

Post by pjc50 »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #40
freddie_mercury wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think this is so hard? You pass a law. Most people don't break the law. You make it illegal for banks to transfer to known Libra things. You audit people. You apply big fines. Murder is illegal but that doesn't mean nobody can commit murder .

Murder is also immoral. Libra is hardly morally questionable. If you want a better comparison take (software) piracy. Piracy is illegal and while I'm sure Steam, Spotify, and Netflix has reduced it a lot it is still thriving and many people break the law if not daily at least monthly. Best thing you can do is to make a law that forces banks to prevent payments to known Libra sellers, but again if there is value in Li…

It's Facebook. If we were talking about a privacy-conscious system, maybe, but it's guaranteed to be the opposite. Facebook wouldn't do something like this without tying it to the user's FB account.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#48

Post by lacker »

noname120 wrote: post #21
MaupitiBlue wrote: post #8

Dumbest move ever by Facebook to preanounce and give governments time to complain. They should have moved fast and dealt with the consequences later. They had a reasonable chance of being the dominant cryptocurrency, and instead they get to spend a year apologizing and backtracking before they ever deploy.

Alternatively, they should have worked with governments to make sure to address their worries before announcing it publicly.

That would just never happen. The French government doesn’t have some minor worries that can be resolved by changing an API. They are going to oppose anything that is cryptocurrency plus Facebook.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#49

Post by aazaa »

pjc50 wrote: post #36
aazaa wrote: post #27

> “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations” What a bizarre statement. Providing for security is also inherent to sovereignty of nations, but private security firms flourish. It's also odd in the context of Germany in particular where a private currency has been used for many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiemgauer I suspect there's a lot more behind this sta…

Germany has zero interest in devaluation; in fact they've been accused of being far too strict in Euro monetary policy, with the 0-2% inflation target.

Germany has profited immensely from the use of the euro in foreign trade. Had it kept the Deutschmark, German exports would be by some esteems 25% more expensive than they are now, given the strong fiscal position of the country.

Germany is in a unique position of being able to jawbone about devaluation and monetary policy while reaping the rewards of spendthrift member states.

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