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

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

#291

Post by buboard » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 11:39 AM UTC

foepys wrote: post #286

buboard wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take a company to court, but not a government. Imagine being a legitimate venezuelan businessman with an account in the US for example. Money is sort-of fundamental (it's one tool), and that's more so because today's fiat money is powered by guns. In the past, europe would have a multitude of coins being used concurrently with some of them dominating like the Florin. Its a recent development that governments…

You can absolutely take a government to court. What are you talking about?

Even if you can you re guaranteed to lose because the govt makes its own laws

How would that work with VZ?

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

#292

Post by rocqua » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 11:41 AM UTC

rmilejczz wrote: post #96

rocqua wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, people have 'good reason' to want drugs: They feel good, and mostly, people get addicted. Moreover, there is much less of a scale requirement for drugs. It is pretty easy to make money on drugs when 0.1% of all people are using your drugs. Whereas, a currency used by 0.1% of your friends / neighbors is totally useless. These reasons make it 1) easier to suppress a currency 2) harder to suppress drugs.

I feel like you’re reasoning is biased, I’ve seen cocaine usage for adults 18-25 reported around 0.8% to 2.0%, and it sustains an illegal industry. I unfortunately have no figures on bitcoin participation and couldn’t find anything decent when searching on mobile, but I imagine it would be a similar niche.

Bitcoin, at the moment, isn't used as a currency. Nor is it very viable as one. Instead, it is a store of value, much like gold.

Using something as a store of value has much less of a scale requirement. You only need a few people that will be willing to exchange your Bitcoin into something else in order for it to work as savings / an investment. Whereas a currency requires multiple places where you buy goods to accept it. Moreover, those places only really have a reason to accept a currency if multiple customers would use that currency.

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

#293

Post by ummwhat » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 11:42 AM UTC

thefounder wrote: post #254

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?

Yeah except they are not digital currencies(i.e you cant store them on a cold wallet, you can't send or accept them without several 3rd parties involved(i.e paypal, visa, banks)

>you cant store them on a cold wallet

Literally the only wallet is a cold wallet. Cold hard cash.

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

#294

Post by short_sells_poo » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 11:42 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #221

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…

« a lost password or a hacked computer could permanently eat away your money » If it happens less than 0.5% of the time, then you are losing more money in fees with your forex broker. Also don't forget the massive cashflow advantage of dealing in crypto only. Minutes to send crypto vs 24-48h + weekends/holiday delays incurred by your broker wires. That's especially true of businesses who transact with their partners/…

Fast transfers are not something that cryptocurrencies uniquely enable, so I think it is unfair to highlight that as a feature.

Transfers could (and often are) instant without cryptocurrencies too. Inside Europe most transfers clear within minutes.

The main reason why some transfers are slow is due to KYC rules which cryptos do not implement. With the same procedures in place, they'd be just as slow.

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

#295

Post by BubRoss » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 11:58 AM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #148

BubRoss wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment I replied to said cryptocurrency.

Libra is a cryptocurrency from Facebook, and intended as a token of exchange is also a currency. (Did that really need spelling out?) Thus the cryptocurrency Libra is no help at all shielding you from the permission of large corporations.

The comment I replied to just said cryptocurrency, so I was talking about cryptocurrency in general, not libra specifically (Did that really need spelling out?).

Also some centralized cryptocurrencies still use keys and random addresses, which means they work by default unless the addresses are blacklisted.

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

#296

Post by antihero » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 12:04 PM UTC

wallace_f wrote: post #283

antihero wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least governments are sort of remotely accountable. If we've learned anything from the entire fucking history of the internet it's that nerds with power are not particularly accountable.

Do you really think if the internet was architected by politicians or corporate suits rather than 'some nerds with power'that it would have turned out better?

No, but let's not conflate the internet and currency/

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

#297

Post by CathedralBorrow » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 12:26 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #171

StevePerkins wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry. Sometimes goldbugs, and the crypto hardcore, get pretty far out there on the edge. It can be confusing whether something is an interesting point, worthy of discussion... or just outright "alternative reality", like climate change denial, that you should walk away from. Are you actually saying that: 1. The payment processors joined this consortium to AVOID helping crytocurrencies catch on in the mainstream?…

1. Look into the technical details carefully. Its not really a cryptocurrency except on the surface. Core aspects of the design absolutely preclude any truly distributed operation. Everything goes through a small number of nodes. It should be obvious that payment processors do not want cryptocurrencies to catch on. I know many people will never understand this, but the true purpose of cryptocurrency is to act as digi…

> Yes, my worldview is obviously very different from yours.

There's worldview, and then there's confidently stating speculative mind-reading as fact.

Like when you say that the true reason behind payment processors and governments backing Libra was to "hold off the cryptocurrencies for a few extra years." Can you source your claim? Or any of your theories? Is this something you just 'know' to be true?

The cryptocurrency community is rife with people describing in exact detail the thinking and motivation of players behind the scenes, but often it turns out to be just "Here's what I am imagining".

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

#298

Post by grey-area » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 12:52 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #275

grey-area wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a for-profit company is running the currency, the users of the currency are in a loosing position True, but exactly the same applies to a state running the currency, with even more evidence of malfeasance and manipulation. State currency loses significant value every year by design, and the management of it is really opaque. I’d rather a cooperative mutually owned currency to either corporate or state control.

If you're imagining a mutual organisation of millions of people who are theoretically on equal standing and have a say in governance as far as possible, wouldn't that look rather like a state? What's the practical distinction you're drawing between a cooperative mutual organisation and a state?

You don't get to choose which state you belong to as chattel.

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

#299

Post by lawn » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

kuschku wrote: post #250

lucasverra wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%

Why not? Thanks to SEPA ICT I can send up to 15'000€ in less than 10 seconds — actually faster than Bitcoin or anything else — to anyone else in the EU. Why would I need to use Libra or anything else, what does it provide me that normal money doesn't? Why should a broken commercial currency with surveillance integration be used globally just because the US payment situation is broken?

You cannot compare the speed of the different services without bringing up settlement time, how long it takes for money to become irreversible.

Yes you can send money very quickly with SEPA, but that's not the settlement time. The money can still be reversed (although with more difficulty than credit card payments). With Bitcoin you also get a notification in seconds, but the payment becomes extremely more difficult to reverse in around 10 minutes.

So they're either equally fast or Bitcoin is faster.

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

#300

Post by grey-area » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 12:58 PM UTC

asjw wrote: post #249

grey-area wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worked for large banks and fintech startups It's true banks don't work like tech companies, it is also true that tech companies don't work like bank and the 100% of them failed to replace banks, because banks are more trustworthy when it's about client'money safety. legacy systems are a good thing, it means they already solved a lot of edge cases and been working good enough for years (or tens of years) The new shi…

I agree there are things both could learn from each other.

I do think established banks have a lot of baggage and entirely the wrong emphasis for a world which runs on software. Some of their old rules still encode useful information, many don't, and it will be hard to disentangle the essential from the moribund.