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

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

#251

Post by quibbler » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:11 AM UTC

Y2WATERMARK wrote: post #190

lucasverra wrote: post #55

David Marcus update [1] : Special thanks to @Visa and @Mastercard for sticking it out until the 11th hour. The pressure has been intense (understatement), and I respect their decision to wait until there’s regulatory clarity for @Libra_ to proceed, vs. the invoked threats (by many) on their biz. I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update. Of course, it’s not great news in the short term, but i…

Here's the reply from Nick Szabo: "You might want to ask yourself why the pressure has been so intense. And read some history that Bitcoin pioneers were aware of, for example the failure of e-gold. Your failure to learn from history has caused you to at great cost recapitulate the failures of the past.": https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/1182776582932332544?s=...

Wish he would elaborate. I don't really know what he means. What did Bitcoin do to reduce the pressure?

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

#252

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:19 AM 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?

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by azernik » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:20 AM 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?

> Why should a broken commercial currency with surveillance integration be used globally just because the US payment situation is broken?

I suspect it won't be. Possibly could also catch on in developed countries, although places like Kenya and India already have home-grown non-bank phone-based payment systems. One market I can see would be remittances for international migrant workers - think the Indian workers in the UAE, or Filipinos (well, mostly Filipinas) across the Middle East.

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

#254

Post by thefounder » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

te_chris wrote: post #223

thefounder wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people want is a stable currency that they can use where ever they want. That means at atm/mfm machines, pos, internet and p2p. They couldn't care less if visa/mastercard or JPMorgan is behind it. The issue is that without visa/mastercard is hard to convince banks and merchants to accept this new currency.

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)

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

#255

Post by vbo » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

I'm puzzled by HN's attitude towards Libra. I can understand being wary of having Facebook run the world's money and how a metacurrency such as Libra could break world economics as we know it, but I can't help be excited about the prospect of widespread digital money usage and FB is one of the few companies that can drive that. Perhaps HN draws its animosity towards Libra from all the cryptocurrency shenanigans of the last few years, but given this community is comfortable with innovation and risk, I would expect HN to be imagining usecases and scenarios for digital money rather than dismiss the whole concept based on emotion related to Facebook and/or cryptocurrencies.

If the world does move ahead with central bank issued digital currencies - and it seems there's a lot of chatter in that area - then a metacurrency will no doubt pop up at some point anyway. Because that's what I expect hackers will find fascinating and because it will suddenly become possible. So we'll get Libra one way or another, but it may not be Facebook's.

A full fledged digital currency ecosystem will be incompatible with the status quo to a large degree, but that's no reason for dismissal. Doesn't all innovation challenge the status quo? Ultimately, the cat it out of the bag and the question is not if, but how digital scarcity, whether trustful or trustless (or a mix of the two), will impact our definition and use of money.

We'll have to ensure AML rules evolve to fit the new paradigm and that's fine. But we shouldn't look at existing AML frameworks and refuse innovation because our solutions for the past don't fit our possibilities for the future.

And regardless of the outcome of Libra, Facebook is making huge inroads in prompting conversations and ultimately regulating digital money, which in itself is a huge win. Given the negative govt and public reactions and their standing ground on the matter, they're doing it at their own expense and I'll give them kudos for that. I don't see any of the existing forces in the finance ecosystem do anything close to this.

Money and payments have stood still amidst the digital revolution. Imagine micropayments for consuming online content and how they could address some of the biggest issues prompted by the attention economy. The likes of visa and mastercard could've made this a real at any moment in the last 20 years or so.

I welcome anyone trying to do something bold. It's progress, regardless of the outcome of any specific project.

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

#256

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

lacker wrote: post #38

I hope this doesn't cause Facebook to give up on Libra. I personally have no desire to own Libra. But traditional bank accounts kind of suck as a product and I would like to see more tech companies competing with them. The problems with bank accounts: 1. They charge you fees for things 2. They try to upsell me stupid financial products 3. They are not easy to use in other countries 4. Typing in my credit card number…

Have you considered moving to Europe?

I'm being slightly facetious, but there are banks here that are better at all of these.

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

#257

Post by celticninja » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

avhwl wrote: post #58

celticninja wrote: post #40

The centralisation of Libra made it easy to kill. Bitcoin can be hampered but not outright killed, at least not over night. A death by a thousand cuts is the most likely solution but by no means guarantees Victory.

>Bitcoin can be hampered but not outright killed, at least not over night. A death by a thousand cuts is the most likely solution but by no means guarantees Victory. Ignoring policy attacks, and focusing on the purely technical: A useful metric here is to compare the cost of executing a 51% attack on Bitcoin long enough to erode confidence in the software to the military budget of the top nation states. Additionally,…

Everyone seems to forget that whilst a 51% attack could easily be financed by a nation state, actually getting the hardware to perform it is the bottleneck.

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

#258

Post by easytiger » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:32 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)

So you are saying there are even more benefits?

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

#259

Post by buboard » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #129

lucasverra wrote: post #55

David Marcus update [1] : Special thanks to @Visa and @Mastercard for sticking it out until the 11th hour. The pressure has been intense (understatement), and I respect their decision to wait until there’s regulatory clarity for @Libra_ to proceed, vs. the invoked threats (by many) on their biz. I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update. Of course, it’s not great news in the short term, but i…

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…

One potentially huge market is online payments and small transactions. If libra is embedded into the browser, millions of blogs could start charging for frictionless access to their content, and thousands of games would improve their experience and revenue. That s a huge and largely unserved area, unless you think that entering card numbers and private data with every spent penny is a good situation. I think Libra is going after this kind of use cases, the ones that are not possible today. If that works, and it catches on, then yeah, they ll go after the 0.5% because people will want that too.

A blockchain is also a digital signature, a verifiable programmable general purpose ledger for smart contracts. Just giving each FB user a wallet id, even without money, has a lot of potential.

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

#260

Post by CJefferson » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

vbo wrote: post #255

I'm puzzled by HN's attitude towards Libra. I can understand being wary of having Facebook run the world's money and how a metacurrency such as Libra could break world economics as we know it, but I can't help be excited about the prospect of widespread digital money usage and FB is one of the few companies that can drive that. Perhaps HN draws its animosity towards Libra from all the cryptocurrency shenanigans of th…

My fundamental issue is simple. Money, who owns it and how it moves around, is fundamental to our society. I don't want that power owned by a company who might decide one day, without warning or reason, to close my account.