101–110 of 138 posts
So.. no reliable way to actually get your monopoly money into USD? at least they don't falsely claim to have the USD sitting in a bank, that's a start i guess.
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> This is basically any libertarians pipe dream. Are you sure about this? I thought libertarians were against all institutions such as the state with power over people. UBI is a socialist policy. It seems in total contradiction with libertarian principles to me. How is that possible?
UBI is similar to negative income tax, which was proposed by (among others) Friedman.
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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…
Do you know how would this work in Libra's case in practice? Would there need to be a super majority to block a given address? I guess the government could force the whole consortium to block an address though.
On the other hand, the government could also use anti-terrorism law to force coinbase and any legal exchanges to ban a certain bitcoin address and any movement from this address. Coinbase already banned all people sending coins to sites such as the dailystormer for example. While this was a private initiative, the government could pass a law to ban people and businesses from sending bitcoins to Iran for example. Hard to enforce I know but scary enough to be problematic (see war on drugs for example).
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I think it is likely that this is backed by a substantial set of US political interests. People that want to experiment with UBI might want to see a Facebook sanctioned UBI. This is basically any libertarians pipe dream. 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…
> This is basically any libertarians pipe dream. Are you sure about this? I thought libertarians were against all institutions such as the state with power over people. UBI is a socialist policy. It seems in total contradiction with libertarian principles to me. How is that possible?
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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. 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 a…
Isn't this a transfer of power over the movement of money away from the government, and to a corporate consortium? That’s kind of the point.
I cannot understand why you would want to use Facebook's "currency". I'd just use what we currently have.
Biggest bank in Russia (Sberbank) introduced a simple feature: if you know a phone number of a person, you can enter it on their website and if the owner of the phone number has any account with Sberbank you can send him money. The convenience of such feature was so big that it caused people move from other banks to Sberbank just to use it. Eventually leading to government regulation making this feature bank-agnostic…
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I don't think governments 'dont care' but rather they are powerless to act effectively against Bitcoin. A ban would legitimize its utility to people skeptical of central banking. Because Satoshi is anonymous, there is no person or team to attack with legal or extralegal coercion. Only way to effectively take down bitcoin is to spend ~$1B building a huge mining operation with the purpose of launching a 51% attack, but…
There's a simple way to ban bitcoin. Govts already regulate the banking and payment companies. Govt can compel them to not allow/facilitate exchange of bitcoin for fiat currency or vice-versa. Without banking/payments infra supporting such a conversion (only hand to hand cash transfer and exchange conversion by person to person transfers would be possible) which will be very small and network will be dead soon. But o…
Your hypothetical situation is blown out of the water here by existing technology that is clearly very hard to stop. How are governments going with banning torrents?
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UBI is similar to negative income tax, which was proposed by (among others) Friedman.
That just shifts the question to whether Friedman was a libertarian. This is certainly not a consensual opinion in that camp.
>Parity with this basket of currencies will be reached via a redemption mechanism similar to other stablecoins such as Tether So.. no reliable way to actually get your monopoly money into USD? at least they don't falsely claim to have the USD sitting in a bank, that's a start i guess.
Can't find the source but it was reliable, Techcrunch or the New York Times I think
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> It will allow for a worldwide social credit system. If Facebook decides to remove you for wrong speak or wrong think, your money and many services will be inaccessible. How is this different than what we have today with banks and credit card companies? The government can already freeze your funds. And now there are examples of people being censored online by being dropped by PayPal, which sets a scary precedent no…
While the grandparent post may have misstated the threat, there is a real danger here. It is not just a new style of credit card. And while it will act like a bank, it appears it will dodge regulation and consumer protection (limited as it is) under the word "cryptocurrency" or some other neologism poorly understood by the public and legislators. Will Libra deposits be covered under FDIC? Will it be subject to closur…