Will "Objectional Groups" be preventing from using Libra? Who will define what is an "Objectional Group"?
Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#772Expansion and contraction of the monetary supply by central banks is critical to preventing financial disasters. Cryto subverts this.
Not to mention making transactions harder and not easier.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#773This is an interesting story and I would like to learn more about libra-coin. Unfortunately I think hackernews has a strong anti-facebook bias that is making the opinions here nearly universally one sided. I think we can say three things fairly uncontroversially in favor of this 1. The world could use an online independent currency 2. Adding stability to blockchain currencies and having that work on a large scale is…
Until cryptocurrencies can deal with 51% attacks they are a waste of time in my mind. The technology is interesting, and that's about it.
51% attack applies to mining. Libra will not be mined. They have 33% attack on voting... but if 1/3 of the founding companies disagree about some transfer, they've got bigger issues than just that attack.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#774Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't the case, your wallet is not tied to your Facebook account.
“Sign-in with Facebook” is all it takes to lose your right to privacy though. It’s pretty clear this is an attempt to take advantage of network effects and dominate the market early. There is also no guarantee that while FB will be one many validators, I dont see any hard limit on the number of validators required for the network to be operable. So over time a single validators could take over. No one will bother cha…
Use a different wallet then. Of course it will be tied to your FB account if you use a FB wallet.
How will they kick out the existing validators?
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#775I'm biased as I'm working on this project. But I'm super happy it's finally out there :) There's a lot of really cool cryptography and tech on this project and there's still a lot for people to discover!
There's a lot of interesting physics in building thermonuclear weapons. Doesn't mean you should do it. Your talents could be used to help the world. Instead, they are being used to enclose common spaces and pull apart the fabric of society. Get a better job?
I understand there's a lot of hate on FB on HN, but I think there's a gap between thermonuclear weapons and crypto currency project.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#776Kind of interested in what this means for a non Facebook user. As one of those I already feel sometimes marginalised when content is shared on their walled garden and I need my wife to look at the dates for my kids’ sporting events because they’re only published on Facebook. Now I’m going to be unable to carry out financial transactions, too.
If you dig into the documentation they've released so far, you'll find that it explicitly addresses this (I also am in the "No Facebook-owned Services" camp, so I went digging for the answer.)
There are two subsidiary organizations: first, the Libra Association, which is the governance organization populated by the "validators", i.e. the corporate partners who ponied up the $10MM entry fee.
The second is Calibra, the engineering arm spun off of Facebook itself, which is developing all of the bits and pieces that make up this technology. This includes the endpoints, client software, node servers, and so on.
Neither of these subsidiaries requires a Facebook account to interact with (although it's unlikely any of us will interact with the former, realistically); this is explicitly stated in the FAQ on the Calibra page, where it states that you can interact with the payment ecosystem using the (forthcoming) wallet software directly.
With that being said, they will also be integrating it nicely with Messenger and WhatsApp; this is likely where the majority of users will interact with it, which provides a nice front-end (the screenshots look very similar to Apple Pay).
Thus, if you need a long, unwieldy, or hard-to-surface address to send assets with the Calibra wallet, or if FB users can't easily target a wallet address for payment, then you're still facing a usability barrier, if not a technical one. I'm not sure if there's much a difference between the two, honestly, beyond the semantic one.
Furthermore, there's absolutely no guarantees that this won't change over time - I could absolutely see FB bringing the pressure down on Calibra to play within the garden, so to speak. We'll have to wait and see what implementations actually appear, not just what they've announced on Day 1.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#777Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing that separates this from a bank database is a small thing, but important, and that's that even the bank cannot reduce your balance in secret without your authorization, since transactions are signed and the ledger is public. That's because of the cryptographic primitives used. I think in the end we have to accept that taxonomies are going to have rough edges because the map is not the territory. With Bitcoi…
Ultimately you’re still beholden to private corps to transact at all, and transactions will be tied to your id, so I don’t see this having any benefit over bank-sourced transactions at all.
> any benefit over bank-sourced transactions at all
I see a few benefits, but nothing on the order of the full potential of crypto.
1. Your FacebookCoin value is a collection of the world's currency value and not tied to a single goverment currency. It's more likely that {Single Fiat Currency} experiences hyperinflation than {Collection of Fiat Currencies} thus some of your risk is mitigated. Most individuals hold the majority of their wealth in a single currency, or in assets that are sold for a single currency (NYSE transactions are completed in USD, same with US based real-estate.)
2. Transaction fees can potentially be lower than incumbents. This is probably going to be especially true with person-to-person international transfers and could big a huge win for third world startups dealing in digital services.
3. The barrier to entry will, in all likelihood, be significantly lower than traditional banks. I've known people with a credit score so low they couldn't open a bank account. I've meet people with anxiety of using a debt card because of over withdrawal fees.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#778Currently most online payments involve a 2% credit card fee. Will Libra lead to a significant reduction in this cost? If Libra can be 0.5% cheaper than credit card payments for consumers then it will become the dominant form of online payment.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#779To me, the biggest roadblock to success is the number of corporate stakeholders. For this to succeed, the advantages of having that many stakeholders (big budget, large audience) must outweigh the disadvantages (two-dozen different and often conflicting opinions). I've never seen a large number of corporations collaborate successfully. A strategic partnership between two companies is hard enough. Two dozen? Good luck…
A very insightful comment- These big companies have nothing to lose by signing up as a "partner" for the big press release, but have nothing to gain by helping facebook beyond the initial PR blitz and are either going to bow out or act as blockers to FB's ambitious plans.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#780Is there some legal shield that prevents regulators from simply saying that Libra is a bank and therefore subject to regulation as such?
No, not really. In various economic regions there can be regulators that rule this way but they won't be able to stop the commerce from happening with this currency. The Libra Foundation can also just register banks in local jurisdictions to check a box. Many incumbent services have done this for decades, like Paypal. Cryptocurrency removes the ability of the state to whitelist transactions, as their power only exist…
If the state can't whitelist transactions, FB will likely not be permitted to launch this currency- The state has every incentive to block any banks from doing business with FB in that case, because they'll invoke terrorist financing and drug sales as blocking issues.