France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra • Hacker News Board

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#431

Post by bko » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

mokus wrote: post #393

lacker wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strange part to me is just that there are already hundreds of crypto currencies available in Germany. When the government says that yes, these hundreds of currencies are fine, but Facebook can’t create one, then it just seems like the policy is anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook.

How many of those are backed (edit: created and fully controlled) by a foreign company with 2.4 billion active users and extremely questionable privacy track record?

As another commenter noted Facebook does not control it.

But you're right that the token is backed by something, mainly one to one reserves of currencies and government bonds. So you're okay with bitcoin, that has a market cap of over $100bn that's backed by nothing, but someone creates a cryptocurrency that's backed by one to one reserves of the safest investments in the world and that's somehow extremely questionable.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#432

Post by IGotThroughIt » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #377

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…

The strange part to me is just that there are already hundreds of crypto currencies available in Germany. When the government says that yes, these hundreds of currencies are fine, but Facebook can’t create one, then it just seems like the policy is anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook.

That's because they have a clear way on how to stop facebook while they don't really know how to stop decentralized crypto (whose whole point is to resist state interference).

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#433

Post by gjulianm » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #406

gjulianm wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest, if Libra takes hold as Facebook wants it to, given the power Facebook already has over communications, ads and social networks, it very well could affect the capability of states to exert their own monetary policy. Not a single one of the examples you made had such a real possibility of being as big as Libra could be.

Facebook has a non controlling stake in Libra. Libra Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization. Do you feel a similar threat of non-profits that try to give financial opportunities to people around the world?

Libra Foundation is a foundation established by Facebook with members like Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe, Visa, Booking, Vodafone or Uber, among others. Calling it a non-profit is a technicality. It is a currency controlled by for-profit organizations. It doesn't have anything to do with actual non-profits.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#434

Post by yitchelle » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

sorokod wrote: post #365

yitchelle wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it is the majority of the population, it is beyond a personal decision. This is just my personal observation. Among the western European countries, German has the smallest level of adoption of credit cards. The French, the Dutch, the Swedes etc love their cashless nature of credit cards, the Germans not so much. Furthermore most of the credit cards offered by the German banks are actually debit cards.

When it is the majority of the population, it is beyond a personal decision. It boggles my mind, but "majority" of the German population has a preference to Currywurst ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst ) - is this also "beyond a personal decision" ? If you have a reference to German government pursuing an anti credit cards policy - please provide it here.

Curry wurst is definitely a cultural thing. Most kids growing up in Germany eats curry wurst, and continues to eat them in adulthood.

This paper (0) is a good write-up on how the card systems works in Germany.

(0) - https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/fub188/22957/...

edit:updated the link

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#435

Post by 4ntonius8lock » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #414

civicsquid wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more of an anti-tech mindset more than an anti-Facebook mindset. If Google did this, I imagine that Germany would be just as upset. If, for example, Goldman Sachs did the same thing, that might not go over smoothly, but I don't think it would see such a negative reaction. I'd assume that feels more in line with the status-quo, whereas tech companies getting involved in financial instruments is not as fam…

I think the way Facebook did this was the right way. It set up Libra as an independent non-profit and they have a non controlling share. The founding members include Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal. All the media coverage on Libra is incredibly dishonest and ill-informed.

Yes, but Facebook will have enormous power in this deal as they own the platform.

Distrusting them is the only logical conclusion given their track record and power.

Libra isn't a decentralized crypto currency, it's a new fiat currency minted by a private corporation with a very questionable track record and an uncomfortable amount of concentrated power. It's also seated in a country with a very weak track record enforcing rules on giant corporation misbehaving.

Users choosing to use something they collectively create and control is very different than this type of centralized power moves. They are in essence trying to bring billions (trillions?) of dollars worth of the worlds savings into US jurisdiction (and likely invested in the US economy via bonds and stocks)

Good decision on the part of Germany and France IMO. I hope more countries follow their example and protect their sovereignty.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#436

Post by Legogris » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #377

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #225

I'm of course not familiar with the specific mindsets and the history of this decision, but I want to share a bit of cultural perspective from Germany that is so far not really considered in this comment section: Germany is very, very keen on preventing powerful entities from acting outside of regulation and similarly, if not more, on preventing a single entity to get in control of everything. This is largely due to…

The strange part to me is just that there are already hundreds of crypto currencies available in Germany. When the government says that yes, these hundreds of currencies are fine, but Facebook can’t create one, then it just seems like the policy is anti-Facebook for the sake of being anti-Facebook.

There's a key difference here in that Libra is a permissioned ledger in a fundamentally different way. One could argue that PoS-based blockchains fall under that as well, since you need to acquire tokens to stake to become a validator and the tokens need to come from somewhere. But if we take Ethereum as an example, they have been under permissionless PoW for years, the tokens are traded on public markets and the capital that needs to be locked up i order to become a validator node is ~6,000 USD with today's ETH price.

In the case of Libra, a validator needs to be brought into the Libra foundation, subject to approval of current members and a membership fee of 10 million USD.

So you can see Bitcoin (permissionless PoW) and Ethereum 2.0 (permissionless PoS) as anonymous, permissionless cooperatives where everyone is playing on the same field, whereas Libra consists of a small consortium of large corporates who can set the rules as they wish.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#437

Post by gretch » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #422

an_ko wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are usually by design not controlled by anyone but the users participating in mining and trading it. Banning that is like banning people from trading in carrots; you can't. It's very different when there's a company with its own financial interests manning the door, regardless of what company that is.

Yes you can ban trading in carrots. Especially in Germany where the law is ... enforced. A ban make most things commercially unviable. If botcoin had widespread use a ban would make it an underground payment system.

Physically ppl ban guns and drugs.

Digital services ppl ban child porn and gambling.

Sucks you are downvoted because you are right

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#438

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #391

jayd16 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Libra a full reserve bank if investment is how they make their money? It doesn't sound any different at all except there's no regulations and no government backing (such as FDIC guarantees).

Full reserve: > By fully backing each coin with a set of stable and liquid assets (described later) and by working with a competitive group of exchanges and other liquidity providers, users can have confidence that they will be able to sell any Libra coin at or close to the value of the reserve at any time. [0] They'll fund expenses from the return of the investments. > How will the reserve be invested? Users of Libr…

That doesn't sound like a full reserve though as its not 100% cash. It says right there that its partially invested in risky assets. Whether they're low risk is just an opinion.

But even assuming it was a full reserve, I don't think its fundamentally different enough to be allowed to skirt the existing laws.

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#439

Post by riking » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

marksomnian wrote: post #339

Jerry2 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love this quote: > As Sarah Jamie Lewis, the director of the Canadian nonprofit Open Privacy, put it: “Can’t wait for a cryptocurrency with the ethics of Uber, the censorship resistance of Paypal, and the centralization of Visa, all tied together under the proven privacy of Facebook.”

Surely she meant decentralisation, though? Visa is anything but decentralised.

Libra at launch is going to be extremely centralized, with decentralization being merely a possibility for future "growth".

Re: France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook's Libra

#440

Post by gjulianm » Sat, Sep 14, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #387

gjulianm wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest, if Libra takes hold as Facebook wants it to, given the power Facebook already has over communications, ads and social networks, it very well could affect the capability of states to exert their own monetary policy. Not a single one of the examples you made had such a real possibility of being as big as Libra could be.

It won’t. Germany already doesn’t have control of the monetary policy for the currency it uses (the Euro). Monetary policy != taxation.

It has control as Germany is part of the Eurozone, the ECB is subjected to the EU treaty, operating under its guidelines, and is accountable to the European Parliament, in which the people of Germany have a say. Maybe it is not as accountable as we wish it were, but it is far from what Facebook would be.