Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

decrypt.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 1001 posts

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#171

Post by Spivak »

muratgozel wrote: post #51

"it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks." from the whitepaper: https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-... It's like one to one copy of the traditional monetary system with speed of transactions improved. The volatility of low-volatile assets still contradictive in…

Your tone is too cynical, this is exactly what it is and what payment processors have been dreaming of for years. A banking system where money can be moved instantly without weird batching, holidays, manual intervention, and all the rest of the legacy crap that plagues current banking.

I'm all for it!

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#172

Post by kadendogthing »

baby wrote: post #121
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 appreciate your point of view, FWIW I believe that I'm doing net positive work for the world. If you don't believe such projects should exist, you can at least agree that such project will inevitably happen and that it is a good thing that they have people like me onboard to influence them in the right direction. I will write more about the things I work on and why I think these are good things on my blog www.crypt…

I largely agree with the OP. I think these technologies can only be viewed in an optimistic way through a techno-libertarian lens; a perspective I don't think has any practical grounding in reality at best and at worst actively ignores why current systems exist (throwing the baby out with the bath water so to speak). And with that lens, I think it's foolish it believe that an engineer will actually be able to steer this machine once it's out in the wild. Systems without power structures still have power structures, they just not may be immediately obvious.

But I do appreciate your constructive attitude towards his comments and I'll be checking your blog a good bit to inform myself as best as I can going forward :). I would ask that you have some kind of "apologetic"/philosophical tag on the type of posts that people like me can filter for so we can read up on that kind of perspective.

I think these systems deserve more social/civic conversation and less technical ones. The tech is cool, but these technologies have the potential to have severe civic ramifications. These technologies are largely out pacing our national and global conversations around how we should use them, their pro's and con's, and the systems they're designed to replace/circumvent... and it's not a good thing.

Thanks for the link!

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#173

Post by _bxg1 »

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…

Yeah; it's been a long time since people trusted their pinky-promises. They've broken them over and over.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#175

Post by Loughla »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #87
devnullbyte wrote: post #25

I hope it crashes and burns. It's the opposite of what crypto was meant to achieve. No central control.

Build something better that will get more adoption then?

I'm trying to understand how your statement isn't just a flippant nonsense remark.

How can I, me, one person, make something that is 'better' (how do you even define that) and will get more adoption than something that is being rolled out by one of the largest and already most popular platforms?

What a ridiculous statement you've made. Just a useless statement to make yourself feel superior, is what it looks like.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#176

Post by Loughla »

_Microft wrote: post #73
rollulus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from the cool crypto and tech, can you tell a bit what you're ethical viewpoints are on what your work is going to do to the world?

Let me guess: "We try to stay away from such pesky questions but are convinced that the amount of good that Facebook can do is unlimited" Yeaah.

Or my favorite - which OP has already stated - "Well someone would do it, so why not me, I'm a good person!"

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#177

Post by _bxg1 »

Spivak wrote: post #171
muratgozel wrote: post #51

"it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks." from the whitepaper: https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-... It's like one to one copy of the traditional monetary system with speed of transactions improved. The volatility of low-volatile assets still contradictive in…

Your tone is too cynical, this is exactly what it is and what payment processors have been dreaming of for years. A banking system where money can be moved instantly without weird batching, holidays, manual intervention, and all the rest of the legacy crap that plagues current banking. I'm all for it!

Except that control will be "liberated" from governments and placed in the hands of an oligopoly of global corporations. Which is way worse.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#178

Post by lightedman »

baby wrote: post #21

I'm biased as I'm working on this project. But I'm super happy it's finally out there :) There's a lot of really cool cryptography and tech on this project and there's still a lot for people to discover!

Here's something for you to discover - cryptocoins have single-handedly wiped out and exceeded all progress we gained in Photovoltaic technology. Thanks for helping destroy the planet and undoing what we've been working so hard to achieve, all in the name of some pet project.
Post reply on HN