Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project • Hacker News Board

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#231

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

swift532 wrote: post #95

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #64

I honestly don't see how to reconcile two desirable aspects of digital currency - Frictionless, fee-less digital transfer of a medium of value. To be able to transfer money natively over the internet. - To keep it secure for 7 billion people - reversible, auditable etc - the benefits we have of a curated financial system. I am sure there are lots of reading on this available - but those two do seem incompatible

You achieve the first by having a distributed, decentralized, fully censorship resistant base layer in which the rule set is more or less like the current Bitcoin rule set. You achieve the second by building upon this base layer. Just like how in the real world the base layer is physical transfer of cash and assets (not very reversible), and we have a financial and legal system built upon that (to simplify, it's doub…

But the only way to do the second is to keep a separate 'ledger' associating real people/companies with network wallets, and to ban the use of wallets whose ownership is not known.

And this automatically brings back a lot of hassle with verifying paperwork, it again allows people to be barred from the network, and it again prevents people withput paperwork from owning currency.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#232

Post by haasted » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:57 AM UTC

buboard wrote: post #227

te_chris wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the eur, usd, aud, nzd, gbp, jpy? That sort of stable and reliable currency with a strong banking infrastructure?

libra is backed by eur/usd/gbp etc.

Yeah, but in a basket, so there will still be an exchange rate risk towards each of its currency components individually.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#233

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:58 AM UTC

Lucadg wrote: post #131

I don't like Libra but I wouldn't dismiss it just yet. - Governments: We'll ban Libra. - Facebook: Let us do Libra and we'll give you access to the financial transactions which otherwise would go dark with Bitcoin or Wechat.

- Governments: oh yes, we'll trade our ability to set monetary policies for the off-chance that someone who wanted to hide from regulators will choose to trust Facebook with their shady transactions, and will continue to do so after the first time we catch them in the act based on data Facebook provided to us.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#234

Post by buboard » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 7:59 AM UTC

haasted wrote: post #232

buboard wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

libra is backed by eur/usd/gbp etc.

Yeah, but in a basket, so there will still be an exchange rate risk towards each of its currency components individually.

due to the central limit, its behaviour will be more predictable

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#235

Post by masternda » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:11 AM UTC

lyqwyd wrote: post #143

john_moscow wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fate of Libra isn't tied to Visa/Mastercard's withdrawal. It's ultimately about whether there is a market for a new mechanism for international money transfers. As someone who runs a business that has (small) offices both in EU and North America, let me share a quick overview of the current state of things. When you want to transfer a non-trivial amount of money between 2 countries, you have likely received it in…

What do you consider non-trivial? I transfer money to Africa on a regular basis, and I don’t have these same issues other than the difference between published exchange rate and realized, which is about 1-1.5%. Transfer fees are minimal. I transfer about $3,000 per month, but no I could go up to at least $10K without issue. Occasionally it can have a bit of a delay, but normally it closes in less than a minute, and I…

It is trivial when you are transferring from a Western country to an African country using services like Transferwise, Worldremit, etc but I consider transferring money from Africa to a western country non-trivial. I have personally experienced this when parents are trying to pay for tuition fees, upkeep allowance, etc. This is one of the great advantages I see Libra bringing.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#236

Post by lucasverra » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

te_chris wrote: post #223

thefounder wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people want is a stable currency that they can use where ever they want. That means at atm/mfm machines, pos, internet and p2p. They couldn't care less if visa/mastercard or JPMorgan is behind it. The issue is that without visa/mastercard is hard to convince banks and merchants to accept this new currency.

You mean like the eur, usd, aud, nzd, gbp, jpy? That sort of stable and reliable currency with a strong banking infrastructure?

yeah, those are the ones you can't sent 2 or 3 units of abroad in a minute by chat, where the receiver is not taxed 2-5%

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#237

Post by plange » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:21 AM UTC

john_minsk wrote: post #208

chris_wot wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I cannot trust anything related to Facebook.

Why is that? Potentially they have a lot of power, but did they exercise it in a wrong way in public so far? I don’t think so

http://www.salimvirani.com/facebook/

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/23/facebook-releases-new-cambri...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/06/we-shouldn...

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#238

Post by starfallg » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:22 AM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #229

starfallg wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see it as inevitable and, for the reasons you point out, not too difficult, as the incumbents are sclerotic and unable to grasp the importance of software. It's not inevitable at all. This is because (retail) banks operate more or less in the same way in their back office. The change is the front office - retail branches are being replaced with apps. But they have seen this before - with telephone and online banki…

I know people who work at large banks, they work nothing like a tech company. Tech/IT is seen as a cost centre, often outsourced, and if not outsourced performed by disillusioned teams with neither influence nor autonomy. The back end of big banks is a huge mess of legacy systems, they had to be forced to adopt open banking, and the leadership don’t recognise that everything will be software soon. They are the antith…

> I know people who work at large banks, they work nothing like a tech company.

> Tech/IT is seen as a cost centre, often outsourced, and if not outsourced performed by disillusioned teams with neither influence nor autonomy.

That may be true, but how people work is beside the point. That's a question of culture and dependent on the industry and it's maturity. Yes, it may make or break individual companies, but on the scale of industries it's not relevant.

The truth is that tech companies don't "win" by working better, they "win" by playing a different game and the game here isn't too different to the incumbents.

> The back end of big banks is a huge mess of legacy systems

Yes and no, as big banks are not monolithic nor homogenous. But this doesn't make the jobs of startups any easier either because the interfaces to existing platforms are just as necessary for them in order to interoperate.

>the leadership don’t recognise that everything will be software soon

Actually they do and they are betting on that to cut costs by automating legacy and inefficient functions.

> They are the antithesis of big tech.

They are not the antithesis, they are just at a different stage on the maturity curve. It's up to the disruptors to find enough gaps in their armour to usurp them. But I don't think that there is that much room for disruption in the retail market apart from niches players, because fundamentally their models are not that different.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#239

Post by speedplane » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:25 AM UTC

I don't like Facebook, but I do give them credit for being very smart. They managed to lock a billion eye-balls on their platform and that doesn't happen automatically.

That's what makes this whole Libra thing so shocking. I just can't believe Facebook would be so naive to just shout "digital cross-border currency" and then expect everyone to cheer them on. Bitcoin has been around for years, and controversies surrounding it are well known. PayPal has been around for decades and everyone understands the potential of electronic payments.

The fact that Facebook did not expect this ambivalence / skepticism and address it upfront is a pretty surprising misstep.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#240

Post by harryf » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:33 AM UTC

buboard wrote: post #225

Illniyar wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Libra isn't distributed, in the sense that anyone can start mining it, one of the key premises for its trust was that governance and operation will be handled by a group of powerful and trustworthy companies. The more companies leave the initiative the more centralized it becomes and the less its trust model is valid. If only Facebook remains it isn't any different than a simple virtual currency (like the disco…

I dont buy the idea that Paypal added critical legitimacy to the project. SV companies are a pretty homogeneous interest group, and FB is already one of the largest players. For me libra is trustworthy because it's backed by real money from many governments. It's highly unlikely that facebook would commit real fraud with it, since they both have the cash to pull it through and committing fraud would be devastating to…

I've got to wonder if Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Stripe and others got involved with this on the principle "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer"? Facebook is too big to just crush, so you need a smarter approach.

By initially supporting Libra, they got to find out FB's plans, get access to a bunch of market research and see what kind of hurdles they would face if they wanted to launch their own version of the same thing. Then by backing out at the 11th hour, they're able to undermine Libra's credibility before it gets started and make it look like a doomed project.