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this is giving the power of governments to tech companies, and im not sure how i feel about that, at least bitcoin is truly decentralized
Official site: https://developers.libra.org/ Whitepaper: https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/
Details on the Move programming language [PDF]: https://developers.libra.org/docs/assets/papers/libra-move-a...
For this to succeed, the advantages of having that many stakeholders (big budget, large audience) must outweigh the disadvantages (two-dozen different and often conflicting opinions).
I've never seen a large number of corporations collaborate successfully. A strategic partnership between two companies is hard enough. Two dozen? Good luck.
Especially when some of the partners have a vested interest in this failing. (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Stripe.)
My bet is on existing crypto-currencies solving this problem becuse they can focus on a solution without being constrained by corporate interests.
If Libra launches, I predict the following:
1. It will be very, very delayed. 2. Facebook will take sole ownership and shed all the corporate partners. 3. At that point, they will give up on crypto and just build (or buy) a plain old peer-to-peer payment system.
Alternative 3: They will piggy back on an existing crypto currency.
> The aim, then, is to get to 100 new validators by 2020, and achieve something close to 1,000 transactions a second—roughly 200 times the sum Bitcoin can currently handle, and around half the capacity of Visa. My reactions to the above: 1. 1000 transactions per second seems low. This doesn't feel very scalable to me. 2. Visa has capacity to handle only around 2000 transactions per second? I would have assumed it was…
[1] https://usa.visa.com/run-your-business/small-business-tools/...
Certain activist groups put constant pressure on Facebook to “deplatform” and remove pages for both legitimate in it legitimate reasons. Now we’re talking about giving Facebook control over the very means to do financial transactions. How long Before this also becomes weapononized, by Facebook, or by activists? there is a reason why popular currency systems has been the purview of governments. We’re creating an awful…
The reason for government currency systems were because they backed taxes and had more stability than private entities. There is a long history of trickery from back when banknotes were literally issued by private banks.
It’s going to be interesting. “Unlike previous stablecoins, Libra will not be issued by a central party. Instead, Facebook has enlisted 27 fellow Silicon Valley titans—among them PayPal, Visa, Spotify, Mastercard, Uber, and eBay—to operate as preliminary “validator nodes” who will each share a transparent copy of a vast ledger of transactions reflecting all the activity on the network.” That sounds amazingly dystopia…
> 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
Sixteen Tons is applicable.
"Hey look - Tether demonstrated that a successful stablecoin can be a profitable business model. We can accelerate adoption of our own stablecoin based on our addictive social media experience and social graph and rake in the interest off our float reserves.
So long and thanks for all the fish!"
Private money is not a new thing. In fact, the predecessor to paper money was retail bank issued notes. I think it's still the case in Scotland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_Scotland The concept of nationalized central banks is new.
A couple years ago in London, I seriously confused a young retail clerk by presenting her with Scottish banknotes presumably left over from an earlier trip to Edinburgh. She had to go get her supervisor to assure her that this was indeed real money.
OK, it's more "real" than an IOU I hand you, because I know that in order to issue their IOU they actually had to deposit an equivalent amount of cash with the Bank of England, but it's not legal tender -- while in practice pretty much anyone should be comfortable using it as a medium of exchange, the only _guaranteed_ use of a Scottish note is to exchange it with the issuer for a Bank of England note (or, in Scotland, coins), which you can then proceed to use to pay your taxes or other bills because they _are_ legal tender (value limits apply to specific denominations south of the border, you need to use pound coins north of the border).
But yes, in practice, real money. Just don't try telling anyone they've _got_ to accept it, because there's no such obligation.
It’s going to be interesting. “Unlike previous stablecoins, Libra will not be issued by a central party. Instead, Facebook has enlisted 27 fellow Silicon Valley titans—among them PayPal, Visa, Spotify, Mastercard, Uber, and eBay—to operate as preliminary “validator nodes” who will each share a transparent copy of a vast ledger of transactions reflecting all the activity on the network.” That sounds amazingly dystopia…
> That sounds amazingly dystopian. I mean, that’s literally a money built on an oligarchy. By design. What's actually far more dystopian is the power that Visa, Mastercard and Paypal already have. It's not getting worse with this new thing, it's getting better . Nobody has to use Libra, but getting by without access to Visa/Mastercard/Paypal is a real problem for businesses.
can anyone tell me if people in Iran can use it? this doesn't really answer my question: https://libra.org/en-US/security-privacy/#overview > Working with Law Enforcement > As with any currency or financial infrastructure, bad actors will try to exploit the Libra network. While the network is open and accessible to everyone with internet access, the network's main endpoints will need to follow applicable laws and reg…