11–20 of 138 posts
Facebook may be able to buy off US regulators, but they won’t be able to convince the EU.
There is basically no way that a self respecting first world country will allow this to happen. The national federal reserves in Europe are still responsible for international settlements, that gives a tremendous amount of power and oversight, they won’t allow a third party to take that away from them. Facebook may be able to buy off US regulators, but they won’t be able to convince the EU.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if a company or person is sanctioned, can Facebook or someone else freeze their Libra currency?
Anyone can build their own wallet, Facebook will offer its own wallet (calibra) but you will not have to use it. tl;dr, they can't freeze your wallet if you're not using theirs. Paypal, visa and coinbase will offer their own and you can build your own.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if a company or person is sanctioned, can Facebook or someone else freeze their Libra currency?
Anyone can build their own wallet, Facebook will offer its own wallet (calibra) but you will not have to use it. tl;dr, they can't freeze your wallet if you're not using theirs. Paypal, visa and coinbase will offer their own and you can build your own.
This is false. The wallet just reflects what's in the ledger, and the ledger is controlled by Facebook('s consortium). They can absolutely freeze any addresses they want. Furthermore, they control the currency peg and thus the value of the coin; they can make any address ineligible for redemption and thus worthless. And they certainly will, in the name of preventing fraud and crime and terrorism.
There is basically no way that a self respecting first world country will allow this to happen. The national federal reserves in Europe are still responsible for international settlements, that gives a tremendous amount of power and oversight, they won’t allow a third party to take that away from them. Facebook may be able to buy off US regulators, but they won’t be able to convince the EU.
Wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam isn't going to crack down even harder than the EU. Financial control is a big part of US power abroad and I can't imagine that the US government is going to tolerate a private entity taking that control away, and that's probably for the better. This entire Facebook currency thing sounds like something out of Shadowrun.
On the other hand I think you are right. I expect any US based opposition to move swiftly. Regulations should probably be the least of their concern given how the US has treated entire Nation States trying to move away from US dollar denominated Oil trade. It will be interesting to see what the equivalent of a no-flight zone, arming militants and sending “advisors” will be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone can build their own wallet, Facebook will offer its own wallet (calibra) but you will not have to use it. tl;dr, they can't freeze your wallet if you're not using theirs. Paypal, visa and coinbase will offer their own and you can build your own.
> they can't freeze your wallet if you're not using theirs This is false. The wallet just reflects what's in the ledger, and the ledger is controlled by Facebook('s consortium). They can absolutely freeze any addresses they want. Furthermore, they control the currency peg and thus the value of the coin; they can make any address ineligible for redemption and thus worthless. And they certainly will, in the name of pre…
Isn't this a transfer of power over the movement of money away from the government, and to a corporate consortium?
And they certainly will, in the name of preventing fraud and crime and terrorism.
Which will result in the US government using those accusations more.
There is basically no way that a self respecting first world country will allow this to happen. The national federal reserves in Europe are still responsible for international settlements, that gives a tremendous amount of power and oversight, they won’t allow a third party to take that away from them. Facebook may be able to buy off US regulators, but they won’t be able to convince the EU.
Wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam isn't going to crack down even harder than the EU. Financial control is a big part of US power abroad and I can't imagine that the US government is going to tolerate a private entity taking that control away, and that's probably for the better. This entire Facebook currency thing sounds like something out of Shadowrun.
I wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam wasn't in on it in the first place. The potential military, economic, and intelligence value of this thing should be self evident.
Its a way for companies to capitalize on the cryptocurrency hype, without, ultimately, acting like a real cryptocurrency. Its going to be a giant bank that has government law enforcement and intelligence agencies as its clients and patrons.
This is sponsored by Visa and others. They are co-opting "cryptocurrency" for their own purposes. The goal is for this to become mainstream before real cryptocurrencies and take over before they can really get going for mainstream payments.
I filed a bug report. https://github.com/libra/libra/issues/41
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It bypasses SWIFT but only in the way bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies do already.
statistically, so few people use bitcoin, that one might as well round to zero, so governments do not need to care. FB has 2.5B users whom they can easily manipulate, hence governments care.