Facebook Cryptocurrency Plan Faces Opposition in France

> mitigates risk of being robbed

This is very unlikely, in places with social unrest people get forced to go to bank withdraw cash, or even as far as sale goods to make the cash for gangster, making it digital will make zero difference.

> more lending because of deposits

Lending by who? what deposits? lending most of all depends on risk which requires a stable society and some resemblance of an economic system and policy.

Don't worry so much. You can stop shouting. This will lead to nothing because no one will use it.

Every attempt Facebook has made at commerce has failed miserably. No one trusts Facebook enough to purchase on Facebook, let alone use a Facebook currency.

Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, et al. have all tried over and over again to get people to transact on their platform. Shop on Facebook, Buy on Twitter, Snapcash have all failed. Shopping on Instagram is a failure in progress.

All these companies want to feel like they are more influential than they are. They are really good at getting people to waste their time. Money, not so much.

SEC has no authority over France.

>It will allow for a worldwide social credit system. If Facebook decides to remove you for wrong speak or wrong think, your money and many services will be inaccessible.

How is this different than what we have today with banks and credit card companies? The government can already freeze your funds. And now there are examples of people being censored online by being dropped by PayPal, which sets a scary precedent no matter how terrible their beliefs are.

>Further, they have no mandate like the central bank does to increase employment. Their mandate is to make money for corporations. This will lead to global social unrest.

That made me chuckle. The Fed has shown no concern for those who save by keeping interest rates so dangerously low for so long. The Fed is also here to make money for huge banks and corporations by making credit so cheap. In the long run this may not be the best for employment. Even if it is, it won't be for wages and wealth disparity.

>This will put some third-world countries in complete control by Facebook. I mean, whoever runs the currency, is the country.

Not much different than the role USD and the Euro play in developing nations today.

>Finally, the regulations on crypto and blockchain are still new. This is in Facebook's advantage as they can start lobbying to have these laws in their favor. They can argue for less transparency, as they are a bank, and this fits with their new privacy marketing message.

And what laws does Facebook plan to propose that are worse than the regulation (or lack thereof) that exists for the financial industry today?

>On the other hand, under no circumstances will I accept a world where Facebook started the one world currency.

I agree. I hope it is not Facebook that wins this game. But your other comments are very reactionary.

People who are unfamiliar with WeChat Pay in China, are underestimating the potential for the FB cryptocurrency. The integration of social media and payments by WeChat strongly facilitated consumer adoption of their payment service. Everyone already had phones, everyone had WeChat installed on their phones. When payment services later became available through WeChat, there was a minuscule barrier for customer adoption. As people started using WeChat Pay they quickly found it more convenient for physical and online payments, money transfer between friends, and financial management. Next services like taxi hailing + payment became integrated into the WeChat app, increasing the convenience. The combination of convenience, preinstallation in the dominant social application, and low barrier to entry was a killer combination. In my estimation it turned out to be a stronger combination than Alipay, which started out as a payment service integrated with TaoBao (comparable to the Ebay / Paypal).

Since Facebook has a dominant social app and messaging app position worldwide, their payments service will have worldwide penetration from day one. Since Facebook can do software, the service interface will be more convenient and user friendly that existing services in the first world, and infinitely more so elsewhere. Money can be made here and evidence suggests people want to adopt when there is a no effort road to adoption. There are vested interests to deal with and satisfy on the road to market penetration, existing market players and governments, but American entrepreneurs like Gates and Jobs were able to overcome vested interests in their time and I suspect Mark is equally resourceful when he wants to be.