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

491–500 of 1001 posts

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#491

Post by knocte »

cy6erlion wrote: post #141
knocte wrote: post #131

While I agree with most commenters here that are skeptical about a surveillance-based currency, I'm very positive about the idea of having mainstream apps such as Whatsapp and Messenger introduce the concept of paying with your phone without needing to link your accounts with any bank account or debit/credit card, because the money is in theory being held by your device (under the hood, just holding a private key of…

It can also have the other effect in that it can show cryptography based solutions in a bad light to the public as yet another form of survailance and cause people to be less trusting even when authentic cryptography based money systems exist.

If people worried much about surveillance today, cryptocurrency would already be mainstream. If what FB brings is pretty much the same as the current banking solutions but with some technical advantages on top of it, I doubt they are going to facepalm about it because the better alternative (true cryptocurrencies) is unknown to them.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#492

Post by themacguffinman »

_bxg1 wrote: post #177
Spivak wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your tone is too cynical, this is exactly what it is and what payment processors have been dreaming of for years. A banking system where money can be moved instantly without weird batching, holidays, manual intervention, and all the rest of the legacy crap that plagues current banking. I'm all for it!

Except that control will be "liberated" from governments and placed in the hands of an oligopoly of global corporations. Which is way worse.

How will this liberate control from governments? Libra will still be pegged to government controlled currencies, libra is just a proxy for transportation. Governments can still regulate transactions that cross borders, the same laws will apply and will actually be easier to enforce because the libra network is managed by legal corporations rather than an anonymous pool of users.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#493

Post by lone_haxx0r »

firethief wrote: post #477
staplers wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its lack of regulation. This is false actually. Cryptocurrency's "selling point" is being regulated by mathematical rules and not by potentially-corrupted policymakers.

Fundamental rules govern its existence, but not what's done with it. Most cryptocurrency in use today isn't "regulated" by mathematics any more than banknotes are "regulated" by physics.

That's good.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#494

Post by benmunster1 »

newscracker wrote: post #310

> Facebook says its “stablecoin,” will empower billions and underpin a stunningly ambitious global economy, without selling your data. I wonder how many millions of people were drinking their favorite beverage while reading this and spat it out on whatever/whoever was in front of them! It’s astonishing that after all these years and all the scandals, they’re deluded enough to write such lines with a straight face. Th…

lol I wrote that subhed — was fully meant to be ironic

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#495

Post by codesushi42 »

conanbatt wrote: post #437
Yizahi wrote: post #209

Step 1 - say that your "coin" is not centralized Step 2 - proceed to contradict yourself in the next sentence How the hell is a an obviously centralized system with 3 dozens of privileged entities is not centralized... Also it is not only oligarchy, but completely unaccountable shady oligarchy. Why people continue to "want" it is beyond understanding.

It's an oligarchy just like the nearest hotdog stand is a dictatorship. Don't like it don't use it. Try saying the same to the governments come tax-time.

That's not really an apt analogy. Just wait until vendors only accept Libra as their payment option.

It is not unrealistic either. When I was in China, I dined at restaurants that would only accept WeChat Pay as payment. Only because I was a foreigner was I able to get a pass to pay in fiat.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#496

Post by Mikulas0 »

renaudg wrote: post #260
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…

There is at least this from Zuckerberg's announcement : "Calibra will be regulated like other payment service providers. Any information you share with Calibra will be kept separate from information you share on Facebook."

...and then SQL joined together for analysis.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#497

Post by rdiddly »

eddd wrote: post #461
renaudg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is at least this from Zuckerberg's announcement : "Calibra will be regulated like other payment service providers. Any information you share with Calibra will be kept separate from information you share on Facebook."

Sure it will be kept separate. In separate sql-like tables with a key to join on.

Yup and Facebook will have both tables. The companies that paid in will only get the one table.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#499

Post by conanbatt »

codesushi42 wrote: post #495
conanbatt wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an oligarchy just like the nearest hotdog stand is a dictatorship. Don't like it don't use it. Try saying the same to the governments come tax-time.

That's not really an apt analogy. Just wait until vendors only accept Libra as their payment option. It is not unrealistic either. When I was in China, I dined at restaurants that would only accept WeChat Pay as payment. Only because I was a foreigner was I able to get a pass to pay in fiat.

> Just wait until vendors only accept Libra as their payment option.

The vendors are the oligarchs in this scenario.

> It is not unrealistic either. When I was in China, I dined at restaurants that would only accept WeChat Pay as payment. Only because I was a foreigner was I able to get a pass to pay in fiat.

WeChat is not the result of a private endeavor, it is state-sponsored and controlled. It would be way worse for the government to manage Libra than for Facebook to do it. Gov has USD. This just plain competes. Competition makes all parties work harder on terms for usage. Its strictly positive.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#500

Post by hinkley »

jerf wrote: post #277
renaudg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is at least this from Zuckerberg's announcement : "Calibra will be regulated like other payment service providers. Any information you share with Calibra will be kept separate from information you share on Facebook."

I suspect they are using different definitions of "information", "share", "separate", "Calibra", and "Facebook" than a naive person reading that sentence might expect. I don't mean that as pure snark; I'm dead serious. The legal definition of all those things, the definitions they can get away with using, and the definitions that a normal person would expect from reading that sentence are probably three very differen…

I know at some point I heard of a group that wasn't selling data about particular users but they were selling aggregated data about the users. In typical fashion they had convinced themselves that they were the good guys.

I'd be shocked if Facebook weren't planning the same thing.

Post reply on HN