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

481–490 of 1001 posts

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#481

Post by dmix »

moosey wrote: post #233

If this succeeds, it will be a data collection tool the likes of which the world has never seen, which is why so many companies are willing to put their name on it. The data, along with ML/AI, and our contemporary understanding of the human mind, means that this is a major step towards control that we can't understand. Dr. Harari explains it better than I do in "21 Lessons for the 21st Century", but this tool is part…

> I hope that Europe figures out a regulatory framework that works.

Is this even possible with complex fast-changing software? They always seem to be busy figuring out last decades issues. Or when they do respond to new things it's usually a FUD-riddled overreaction that just straight up cripples the new things so we're only left with the options that the ordained organizations like Visa and Mastercard come up with. Which is usually a worse outcome than before.

If anything we need some simple core digital privacy rights ala the constitution or charters of rights. Not some thousand page mess like GDPR that was intended to curtail the big guys but ends up giving small Austrian retail businesses $4000 fines for installing a simple surveillance camera, which happened to be too broadly pointed outside.

Good intentions meets reality.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#482

Post by chillacy »

amasad wrote: post #226

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.

Same in Hong Kong, could make a hobby collecting then from different banks

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#483

Post by sprayk »

moosey wrote: post #233

If this succeeds, it will be a data collection tool the likes of which the world has never seen, which is why so many companies are willing to put their name on it. The data, along with ML/AI, and our contemporary understanding of the human mind, means that this is a major step towards control that we can't understand. Dr. Harari explains it better than I do in "21 Lessons for the 21st Century", but this tool is part…

> the likes of which the world has never seen

Didn't Google buy tons of Mastercard transaction data to JOIN against their ad profiles? How does the scale of this (and other purchasing datasets they can bring in) compare to the theoretical powers of what Facebook has? I guess one difference might be that it will be able to capture way more outside the US.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#484

Post by chillacy »

supermatt wrote: post #447
wuliwong wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, cryptocurrencies are treated as assets, they are taxed every time you exchange them for something or even each other. I would disagree that libra coin is akin to Facebook and partners creating their own money.

Clearly you didnt read the whitepaper. Facebook (and partners) literally mint libra. You give them a dollar, they mint a dollars worth of libra and stick the dollar in their "reserve". What stops them minting more libra than they actually hold fiat reserves for?

Not a new problem, it applies to bank notes and other stable coins as well right?

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#485

Post by bufferoverflow »

solidasparagus wrote: post #441
tetrisgm wrote: post #22

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's more decentralized than Bitcoin is - there you have 6 pools in control. Global financial systems are expensive and high-reward (not to mention technically challenging since there is not a single proven cryptocurrency that could handle Visa's current TPS - AFAIK). Decentralization makes very little economic sense (at least all the models I've heard so far). True believers forget that normal people have zero int…

No, a pool is not a single entity. That's some bad misinformation.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#486

Post by Sargos »

wuliwong wrote: post #425
supermatt wrote: post #378

So facebook (and partners) can mint their own money. Are we supposed to be OK with that? Wasn't this issue one of the primary reasons for crypto currency existing in the first place. This shouldn't be allowed to exist.

In the US, cryptocurrencies are treated as assets, they are taxed every time you exchange them for something or even each other. I would disagree that libra coin is akin to Facebook and partners creating their own money.

This actually might be a blessing in disguise for crypto currency as Facebook will lobby hard to get that rule changed fast as people aren't going to want to report a line in their taxes for each of the hundreds of items they buy in their taxes.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#488

Post by tVoss42 »

iagooar wrote: post #414

I was going to make a snarky, sarcastic comment about this by writing: "yeah, what could possibly go wrong?". Now that I think about it, it's a genuinely interesting question: what could possibly go wrong?

If a Silicon Valley controlled currency becomes the preferred method of payment, then the companies controlling it get unchecked power over the economy.

Banned from Facebook? You need to find other ways to reach your audience and make money. Banned from Libra? Now you need to find another way to spend your money in a market that preferes Libra.

That's one possible bad ending, but maybe I'm a bit paranoid. Still, you'll also have to consider the dozens privacy issues that will pop up in the meantime, especially given Facebook doesn't currently have the best track record.

Post reply on HN