Libra? ... Gemini? This kid just can't let go of the past can he...
Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#782This seems to me like a modern version of scrip.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#783Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the bank cannot reduce your balance in secret without your authorization, since transactions are signed and the ledger is public This capability is pretty pointless when the bank can indefinitely suspend your ability to make transactions. The ability to block transactions is an essential part of compliance with anti-money-laundering and other banking regulations.
> This capability is pretty pointless when the bank can indefinitely suspend your ability to make transactions. You beat me to it: Having cryptographically signed transactions simply does not matter when you have to submit the transaction to what Zuck calls a "validator". The validator will just refuse to validate if your address is on a blacklist. The net effect is that the coins are frozen. And since this is a back…
Well, there is 1 key difference. The validators can't do that in secret. If they start doing it, then everyone will be aware of it.
The inability to do this stuff in "secret" part is still useful.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#784This 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…
This is just another way to skim off a few cents on user transactions.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#785Would there be anything stopping Google making this offer to users? "Tell us your Libra wallet ID to get YouTube premium for free!"
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#786> "On the first point, Marcus said that Facebook is enforcing a strict separation between users’ social data—their Facebook likes, photos, etc—and the financial data that will be available on Libra’s network. There will not, he insisted, be a readily available data trove connecting users’ transactional data to their Facebook profiles, and users’ funds themselves will be cryptographically secured. “We don’t want finan…
Was it the data that was merged with WhatsApp, or was it the infrastructure? AFAICT, FB can't connect what I said on whatsapp to what I say on Messenger because everything is e2e encrypted. They have metadata (would need it to route the messages, and for providing the service).
What am I missing?
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#787Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At this point, I think I'd honestly rather put my money with Facebook than many of those actual banks out there. This is so ridiculous that I don't even know how to argue with it.
That's probably because systematic bank failure to you is just a fairly tale and you don't understand the risk exposure you have at an actual bank . Open your history book! To be clear, I wouldn't prefer to put my money with either . But if push comes to shove, would you prefer to have an account at a failed bank that holds 10% in reserves, or a private company that holds close to 100% of reserves, because it is not…
This seems to be a false either-or because FB is probably not holding 100% reserves as actual paper cash in a giant Scrooge McDuck vault underneath their HQ. It's holding them at a bank, so that it can get the interest payments.
Thus, a user faces systemic banking system risks plus all firm/stablecoin-provider risks. That combined risk will almost certainly be strictly larger than the systemic banking system risk you'd face by just depositing funds in a bank account that you directly control.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#788This 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…
"1. The world could use an online independent currency"
If it is owned, it not independent.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#789Can someone use this if they espouse "white nationalist"-adjacent beliefs (such as building a border wall and deporting illegal immigrants)? What does it mean if they can or cannot?
So first off Facebook would have to transgress the barrier in place that they say they're erecting between the user's Calibra account and the user's FB or WhatsApp or Insta account – simultaneously Facebook would have to tag its users as holding sets of beliefs that were antithetical to some set of ideal beliefs that would be encoded digitally somewhere inside Facebook's algorithms. To do this without human intervention would be a supreme AI task, to do it without human arbitration would be to blindly trust an algorithm, to do it at all would be an act of tyrannical censorship.
We here at Facebook hope that answers your question.
Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
#790Earlier 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…
> even the bank cannot reduce your balance in secret without your authorization Uh, neither can my Traditional Legacy Bank™ if I ask for regular statements? I suppose you could argue they could lie to me about the actual amount. Well, then I will just sue them for the money.
I just mean that your funds at the bank can be seized without your assent for numerous reasons - civil judgements, asset forfeiture, etc., and given to someone else.