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Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#151

Post by thefounder »

knocte wrote: post #145
thefounder wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of public/private keys if the whole thing can be reversed, recovered and changed by FB with no transparency for the outside world? The private key becomes just a better password, like a SSH key based authentication. Actually I'm pretty sure the wallet will not even require any key. You will be able to sign in with facebook. I see no P2P payments here as everything is really validated by FB and all th…

> What's the point of public/private keys if the whole thing can be reversed, recovered and changed by FB? Less possibility for fraud via identity-stealing. Merchants will not need to see/store your private keys anymore to receive payments.

Where are the keys stored? How are the accounts recovered when they loose the keys? And you really believe facebook will ask users to manage private keys instead to authenticate with their facebook account?

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#152

Post by towndrunk »

alangibson wrote: post #116

When I consider that 1) all transactions must pass through validators 2) which are hand picked 3) by the worlds largest surveillance machine 4) that knows most everything there is to know about me already, I'm thinking I'll take a pass on this one.

5) No support for when things go bad so your screwed

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#154

Post by flixic »

alangibson wrote: post #139
aogaili wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll take a pass but the majority of the people won't so most likely you'll end up using it.

The average civilian associates cryptocurrencies with high profile thefts and dark web drug dealers because that's what makes it into the mainstream media. At best this will panic the big payment processors into making traditional payment options cheaper and easier, further undermining what little reason this has for existing.

And that's why Facebook's Press Release[0] does not mention the word Cryptocurrency. Just "blockchain technology".

[0]: https://scontent.fvno2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.2365-6/65035641...

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#155

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

netsharc wrote: post #114
jbb123 wrote: post #109

I can imagine few things i'm less likely to want than a currency in any way connected to facebook.

Let's see how aware the "general public" are about Facebook's lack of trust, or whether they'll adopt this. Obviously FB have probably seen how WeChat does it in China and are copying them. It's interesting to think that money is one of the things that the Internet hasn't "distrupted" yet, but maybe this is one attempt. Speaking of trust, one should remember that the dollar bill was a promise from the Federal Reserve…

> was a promise from the Federal Reserve to pay whoever had that piece of paper to pay them the actual money written on it.

FYI, as written, that statement makes little sense. The term "actual money" does not mean anything. US dollar notes are actual money.

Before Nixon Shock, the dollars were on a gold standard. The government had a promise to give whoever had the US note the specified amount of physical gold (metal). As it is now, it is called a fiat currency, and no government exchanges it for gold or any other metal or any other form of money. It is still "actual money" though, by most sane definitions.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#156

Post by ihm »

dx7tnt wrote: post #91

"Facebook is enforcing a strict separation between users’ social data—their Facebook likes, photos, etc—and the financial data that will be available on Libra’s network. There will not, he insisted, be a readily available data trove connecting users’ transactional data to their Facebook profiles" I find this extremely hard to believe coming from a company who's entire M.O. is building a profile of its users and track…

I believe them that it won’t be readily available :)

That is, I’m sure Facebook will create link all that data together to improve their surveillance but not let others readily access it. Of course advertisers will still access it indirectly by using it to target their ads.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#157

Post by asah »

hjk05 wrote: post #100
sins wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what Bitcoin failed at?

I tried to buy a cup of coffee recently at a bitcoin only cafe. Though I didn’t end up paying with bitcoin because it took a day for the bitcoin atm deposit to clear. So I asked a friend who worked in the building to spot me a cup of coffee, and he paid... by making a line on a piece of paper they used to do bookkeeping denoted in fiat because no-one wanted to go through the hassle of bitcoin transfers and no one had…

Don't forget high transaction costs for BTC.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#158

Post by booleandilemma »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #64
imw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of interesting physics in building thermonuclear weapons. Doesn't mean you should do it. Your talents could be used to help the world. Instead, they are being used to enclose common spaces and pull apart the fabric of society. Get a better job?

I'd work on nukes before I'd work at Facebook. Nuclear weapons have arguably prevented WWIII, at least so far. Conversely, if WWIII ever does come, I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook has something to do with causing it.

My bet is on Twitter starting WWIII. This is the app politicians prefer use, after all. We’ll have “the tweet heard around the world”.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#160

Post by edouard-harris »

ianai wrote: post #63
acesubido wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds amazingly dystopian. I mean, that’s literally a money built on an oligarchy. By design. IMO, it's a small step towards a better direction. The "validator" consensus (oligarchy) is a much more transparent/inclusive solution compared to the closed financial ecosystems of Wechat/Alipay/Paytm/Grab. If Libra is an oligarchy, closed financial systems are dictatorships

It really does feel like cryptocurrency is how the technical industry will learn/is learning about the financial industry.

Stripe and Paypal are examples of tech companies that already appear to have learned quite a lot about the financial industry.
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