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

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

#321

Post by grey-area »

capableweb wrote: post #314
grey-area wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get to choose which state you belong to as chattel.

In general I guess you don't exactly get to choose willy-nilly which state you want to belong to, but you can make a choice to trying to get out of your current one, at least usually.

No you don’t, and that would be the difference. Our system is still remarkably feudal - obligations are assigned at birth and citizenship is an obligation, not a choice.

Of course if you’re rich or privileged there are many options.

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

#322

Post by lawn »

leetcrew wrote: post #305
lawn wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot compare the speed of the different services without bringing up settlement time, how long it takes for money to become irreversible. Yes you can send money very quickly with SEPA, but that's not the settlement time. The money can still be reversed (although with more difficulty than credit card payments). With Bitcoin you also get a notification in seconds, but the payment becomes extremely more difficult…

most people most of the time care more about the time it takes to get the initial confirmation, not the actual settlement. most consumer transactions are not large enough for reversibility to matter that much.

Exactly. Which will take a few seconds with Bitcoin.

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

#323

Post by tim333 »

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)

There are digital versions of USD and EUR eg. Tether and others.

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

#324

Post by tim333 »

vinniejames wrote: post #318
thefounder wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

More importantly you can't travel with them without paying absurd exchange fees and aweful forex rates

Unless you use Transferwise, Revolut, Monzo or similar.

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

#325

Post by tim333 »

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…

> None of that has really gotten any better in the past ten years

not sure which country you are in but for me, UK based Transferwise largely fixes 1-3 and Paypal 4 and 5

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

#327

Post by ilaksh »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #297
ilaksh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Look into the technical details carefully. Its not really a cryptocurrency except on the surface. Core aspects of the design absolutely preclude any truly distributed operation. Everything goes through a small number of nodes. It should be obvious that payment processors do not want cryptocurrencies to catch on. I know many people will never understand this, but the true purpose of cryptocurrency is to act as digi…

> Yes, my worldview is obviously very different from yours. There's worldview, and then there's confidently stating speculative mind-reading as fact. Like when you say that the true reason behind payment processors and governments backing Libra was to "hold off the cryptocurrencies for a few extra years." Can you source your claim? Or any of your theories? Is this something you just 'know' to be true? The cryptocurre…

That's true it's speculation and I should have qualified it as such. The reason I felt motivated to state it that way though is because it seems so obvious to me that the explanations coming from these companies are marketing that contradict the technical reality. As far as other cryptocurrency people, there are a lot of people who think very differently and everyone has their own view, so maybe the negative generalizations should be tempered.

But you got your generalization in there so what the heck, here is mine. The mainstream community is rife with people who accept marketing and propaganda as truth, but often it turns out to be just "bullshit" and companies or governments were actually just doing selfish things to help themselves strategically.

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

#328

Post by vinniejames »

buboard wrote: post #270
vinniejames wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because politicians threatened them with increased regulatory scrutiny across all of their business

It s possible that the benefit would outweigh the risk - after all they are already in the payments busines and know how AML works etc. They 've done it for bitcoin. So, i would assume they were threatened a little less politely than i imagined.

Threat letters from the Senate: https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Signed%20Letters...

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

#329

Post by vinniejames »

tim333 wrote: post #324
vinniejames wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly you can't travel with them without paying absurd exchange fees and aweful forex rates

Unless you use Transferwise, Revolut, Monzo or similar.

Not true, you still get screwed on cash withdrawals regardless of the service you use. Most ATMs apply DCC even when you hold the local currency

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

#330

Post by espadrine »

lawn wrote: post #299
kuschku wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You cannot compare the speed of the different services without bringing up settlement time, how long it takes for money to become irreversible. Yes you can send money very quickly with SEPA, but that's not the settlement time. The money can still be reversed (although with more difficulty than credit card payments). With Bitcoin you also get a notification in seconds, but the payment becomes extremely more difficult…

> Yes you can send money very quickly with SEPA, but that's not the settlement time. The money can still be reversed

From a banking perspective, the money is settled in 10 seconds, at least with TIPS (the ECB’s platform; the ACH clear it, but the end-user behavior is the same).

Reversal (known as a recall in the standards) requires consent of the beneficiary.

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