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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

#611

Post by lucb1e »

pier25 wrote: post #288
Qasaur wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the fear that people may prefer using other currencies than their own, which collapses the regime of spending through inflation.

Thanks, not sure why I'm being downvoted...

Not sure either, it's a legitimate question. A lot of people seem to find it obvious, but to me it seems like there is a lot of subtleties in why something is or isn't a threat. Bitcoin, Paypal, Ethereum, gift cards, and other online payment systems didn't get this reaction, it's just the Facebook-issued credits (which, for the record, isn't really a cryptocurrency, that's just the marketing department).

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

#612

Post by ClumsyPilot »

downandout wrote: post #556
StreamBright wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. A $5 billion USD hyperbole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook–Cambridge_Analytica_d... "The governments of India[30][31] and Brazil[32][33] demanded that Cambridge Analytica report how anyone used data from the breach in political campaigning, and various regional governments in the United States have lawsuits in their court systems from citizens affected by the data breach.[34] On April 25, 2018, Fa…

Nothing you provided is evidence that any Facebook activity has ever swung any election. The very people that paid Cambridge Analytica for their services in 2016 said that the company’s strategies were ineffective at best, referring to it as “snake oil” [1]. You have provided evidence that people attempted to use Facebook to swing an election. Those two things are not the same. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news…

They have tried to swing elections and broke electoral law in UK.

How could anyone besides them prove effectiveness or ineffectiveness of this campaign? I don't think it's possible. At the very least, the side they supported won (Brexit) and they should not be trusted.

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

#613

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rightbyte wrote: post #422
an_ko wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are usually by design not controlled by anyone but the users participating in mining and trading it. Banning that is like banning people from trading in carrots; you can't. It's very different when there's a company with its own financial interests manning the door, regardless of what company that is.

Yes you can ban trading in carrots. Especially in Germany where the law is ... enforced. A ban make most things commercially unviable. If botcoin had widespread use a ban would make it an underground payment system.

I think his overall point stands: going after facebook is more sensible than chasing individual bitcoiners.

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

#614

Post by lacker »

zaphirplane wrote: post #596
nugget wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the answer better consumer protections, though? Rather than a ban on new technology that threatens the status quo. If Facebook wants to be a bank, they should be subject to the banking regulators and there could be (should be) strong consumer protections preventing the type of corporate behavior you describe.

I feel there is a conflation here. Facebook is free to apply for a banking license in countries they want to operate as a bank in. Facebook shouldn’t be able to circumvent banking over site and regulations by coming in as a technology company with fancy words. The conflation here is Facebook isn’t being blocked form becoming a licensed bank in Germany - correct me if I’m wrong

But they don’t want to become a bank. They want to build a cryptocurrency. There are already hundreds of cryptocurrencies that operate in France and Germany, and the developers do not have to have banking licenses.

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

#615

Post by tradertef »

bko wrote: post #431
mokus wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those are backed (edit: created and fully controlled) by a foreign company with 2.4 billion active users and extremely questionable privacy track record?

As another commenter noted Facebook does not control it. But you're right that the token is backed by something, mainly one to one reserves of currencies and government bonds. So you're okay with bitcoin, that has a market cap of over $100bn that's backed by nothing, but someone creates a cryptocurrency that's backed by one to one reserves of the safest investments in the world and that's somehow extremely questionab…

Libra is not cryptocurrency. It is digital currency.

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

#616

Post by wyattpeak »

throwaway744678 wrote: post #547
the-dude wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a history perspective : the hyperinflation leading up to the 3rd Reich.

That, my friend, is very close to a Godwin point. Let's be careful here.

The original comment is about German attitudes towards the accumulation of power, which are a direct product of their experiences with Nazism. Germans don't want uncontrolled groups accumulating power precisely because it could lead to a situation like Nazi Germany.

Once Godwin's law became a meme it outlived its usefulness. Yes, people tend to hyperbolically compare things to the Nazis. But the Nazis were a real thing that happened in the real world, not some platonic ideal of evil to which nothing compares. Shutting down any comparison to Nazism is absurd, doubly so when discussing German policy.

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

#617

Post by auslander »

black_puppydog wrote: post #562
theturtletalks wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point, but other companies do this without recourse. Paypal is the classic example. They will literally ban you overnight and hold your funds for months. Oh and forget knowing the reason, because revealing why you got banned would reveal too much about their filter algorithm. The key is to diversify where you buy and how you buy it so you're not dependent on any one company.

Which is exactly why you can't risk to have anything even remotely approaching a monopoly in any part of the systems involved in making transactions. Which is why I (also as a German) am very happy that we have a competitive (read: better in literally every way) alternative to credit cards, plus a strong cash culture. Oh and for completeness' sake: if paypal (and libra for that matter) are not regulated according to…

> you can't risk to have anything even remotely approaching a monopoly in any part of the systems involved in making transactions.

AFAIK US is a monopoly for international money transfer. You just cannot bypass a US intermediary bank and US Dollar conversion.

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

#618

Post by ClumsyPilot »

HashThis wrote: post #199
zbolian wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The monetary policy of the currencies underlying libra are also fully determined at the behest of their respective nation states (or centralized monetary authority in the case of the EU). So, actually not that flawed. Governments and central banks are foolish to not get behind something like this because the alternative is something they can't influence at all like Bitcoin which maintains no peg to anything they do.

> ... no peg to anything they do. Libra is still a problem. They start with a basket of USD + Yen + EURs to start. This appeases governments, just for the reason you mention "based on their currences". ...but Libra is designs that they can move away from them over time. It can move to revenue generating investments, like corporate bonds (like money markets do). Libra can then wait until closer to countries defaulting…

I would much rather have world using bitcoin than a global currency controlled by private cartel.

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

#619

Post by torgian »

lacker wrote: post #614
zaphirplane wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel there is a conflation here. Facebook is free to apply for a banking license in countries they want to operate as a bank in. Facebook shouldn’t be able to circumvent banking over site and regulations by coming in as a technology company with fancy words. The conflation here is Facebook isn’t being blocked form becoming a licensed bank in Germany - correct me if I’m wrong

But they don’t want to become a bank. They want to build a cryptocurrency. There are already hundreds of cryptocurrencies that operate in France and Germany, and the developers do not have to have banking licenses.

The difference is that Facebook has millions to pour into resources, marketing, etc, while those other crypto currency companies do not.

I would be very very wary of a social media giant issuing crypto. Lots of inherit dangers there.

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

#620

Post by ClumsyPilot »

littlestymaar wrote: post #465
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…

> Inflation, […] has come to be viewed as inherent to the sovereignty of nations This comment, talking about Germany, the one of the country that has had such a fear of inflation for almost a century, is highly ironic.

Referring to a 'century', interesting. What about Hitler's monetary policy, or the Soviet puppet government of GDR?
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