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Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

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Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#91

Post by biolurker1 »

jeremyjh wrote: post #31

It looks like a misstep followed by a hasty and ignominious retreat because thats exactly what happened - no one anticipated the reaction from lawmakers and rules agencies. Its kind of hard to see this from the perspective of people who follow tech and HN, but Libra really may have been the first occasion that the possibility of crypto as anything other than an investment instrument - e.g. an actual usage as currency…

Imagine FB announcing plans to drop Libra and work with Bitcoin because it cannot be crushed

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#92

Post by wpdev_63 »

facebook would better service itself by help small businesses in timely transactions of cryptocurrencies. With the government debt project to go to $30 trillion within the decade there will be alot of people hedging against the dollar with cryptocurrency and whoever is able to help in transactions with mom and pop stores will make a fortunes. Also it does help you aren't _directly_ competing with the federal reserve. People have been killed for less.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#93

Post by rmilejczz »

rifung wrote: post #78
capableweb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simply hunt down vendors who accept Bitcoin and organizations who facilitate its exchange. This is commonly a argument for having drugs illegal too. "If we hunt them down, eventually there will be no one left" What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger. If Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down? Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole ot…

> What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger. If Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down? Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole other can of worms, so governments might not be able to simply outlaw it. It's not as though drugs became more popular because they became illegal. Prices may have gone up because they were harder to obtain and t…

But they didn’t become less popular either, and instead continued to rise and grow in popularity. That’s the point, outlawing it won’t stop it.

If bitcoins were illegal then I imagine they would probably only be used in illegal transactions.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#94

Post by notahacker »

capableweb wrote: post #56
CamelCaseName wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin can be "killed" in the sense that it can become useless for the 99.99%. Simply hunt down vendors who accept Bitcoin and organizations who facilitate its exchange. At that point, Bitcoin would be essentially dead as a rival to any currency.

> Simply hunt down vendors who accept Bitcoin and organizations who facilitate its exchange. This is commonly a argument for having drugs illegal too. "If we hunt them down, eventually there will be no one left" What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger. If Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down? Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole ot…

There's a black market for drugs because people like taking drugs. On the other hand, people only like receiving cryptographic tokens on the assumption that they will be able to exchange them for something in future, something considerably less likely if giving away products and services for alphanumeric strings is illegal... and unlike drugs, the supply of cryptoassets doesn't shrink when the government makes them more difficult to sell.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#95

Post by swift532 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #64

I honestly don't see how to reconcile two desirable aspects of digital currency - Frictionless, fee-less digital transfer of a medium of value. To be able to transfer money natively over the internet. - To keep it secure for 7 billion people - reversible, auditable etc - the benefits we have of a curated financial system. I am sure there are lots of reading on this available - but those two do seem incompatible

You achieve the first by having a distributed, decentralized, fully censorship resistant base layer in which the rule set is more or less like the current Bitcoin rule set.

You achieve the second by building upon this base layer. Just like how in the real world the base layer is physical transfer of cash and assets (not very reversible), and we have a financial and legal system built upon that (to simplify, it's doubtful how relevant physical transfer is any more).

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#96

Post by rmilejczz »

rocqua wrote: post #85
capableweb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simply hunt down vendors who accept Bitcoin and organizations who facilitate its exchange. This is commonly a argument for having drugs illegal too. "If we hunt them down, eventually there will be no one left" What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger. If Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down? Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole ot…

Thing is, people have 'good reason' to want drugs: They feel good, and mostly, people get addicted. Moreover, there is much less of a scale requirement for drugs. It is pretty easy to make money on drugs when 0.1% of all people are using your drugs. Whereas, a currency used by 0.1% of your friends / neighbors is totally useless. These reasons make it 1) easier to suppress a currency 2) harder to suppress drugs.

I feel like you’re reasoning is biased, I’ve seen cocaine usage for adults 18-25 reported around 0.8% to 2.0%, and it sustains an illegal industry. I unfortunately have no figures on bitcoin participation and couldn’t find anything decent when searching on mobile, but I imagine it would be a similar niche.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#97

Post by capocannoniere »

I'd argue the outcome of this will be that Facebook will launch their own payments infrastructure on top of WhatsApp. There was no need for crypto or a Libra association to begin with.

According to the leaked Facebook all-hands audio, Facebook is already planning to launch payments in Mexico by end of 2019 (https://qz.com/1719731/zuckerberg-confirms-facebook-payment-...).

I wouldn't be surprised if this goes extremely well for Facebook and WhatsApp payments becomes WeChat Pay / AliPay for the rest of the world.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#98

Post by lacker »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #61
lacker wrote: post #38

I hope this doesn't cause Facebook to give up on Libra. I personally have no desire to own Libra. But traditional bank accounts kind of suck as a product and I would like to see more tech companies competing with them. The problems with bank accounts: 1. They charge you fees for things 2. They try to upsell me stupid financial products 3. They are not easy to use in other countries 4. Typing in my credit card number…

Do you really think a Facebook currency is not going to charge fees and upsell you left, right and centre the first moment they think they can get away with it? That's as well as targeting advertising and selling data of your spending patterns.

It's not that I think the Libra product is going to be fantastic per se. I just think that competition will force all the companies to make their products better. I don't want the government to prevent companies from making products, I want to be able to choose of my own free will whether it's a good product or not.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#99

Post by lacker »

capableweb wrote: post #41
lacker wrote: post #38

I hope this doesn't cause Facebook to give up on Libra. I personally have no desire to own Libra. But traditional bank accounts kind of suck as a product and I would like to see more tech companies competing with them. The problems with bank accounts: 1. They charge you fees for things 2. They try to upsell me stupid financial products 3. They are not easy to use in other countries 4. Typing in my credit card number…

Traditional banking replaced by company focused on good technology, sure, that sounds good. That's not what Libra aim(ed) for though. Libra was designed as a currency to take over the world, replacing the rest. You do not want a for-profit company to run a global currency. Sure, let them run banks, one bank won't rule the world. But the one who holds all the money, will.

I do want a for-profit company to run a global currency. I would rather there be hundreds of global currencies, with me free to choose which one I would rather use, if any.

Re: Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

#100

Post by FillardMillmore »

rifung wrote: post #78
capableweb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simply hunt down vendors who accept Bitcoin and organizations who facilitate its exchange. This is commonly a argument for having drugs illegal too. "If we hunt them down, eventually there will be no one left" What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger. If Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down? Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole ot…

> What we know now, is that making something illegal, could make it stronger. If Bitcoin becomes illegal in most country, would the price go up or down? Suddenly there is a black market, and opens up a whole other can of worms, so governments might not be able to simply outlaw it. It's not as though drugs became more popular because they became illegal. Prices may have gone up because they were harder to obtain and t…

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I do think there's an allure to things that have been banned or that are illegal. For example, how many young music listeners would want to listen to an album even more after Tipper Gore managed to push through that 'Parental Advisory' warning on the front of albums?

This is not exactly a completely relevant example, but Colorado did see a decrease in teen marijuana use after marijuana was legalized recreationally (granted, it has also recently seen a decrease in teen heroin use, so the legal status may not be directly causal, but I find it interesting nonetheless):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/11/follo...

Regarding Bitcoin, one incentive might be positive press coverage - a PR move, so to say, such as when APMEX, the popular online precious metals exchange began accepting Bitcoin in late 2017:

https://www.coindesk.com/major-gold-dealer-apmex-begins-acce...

Many of these cryptocurrencies have non-profit foundations that push for adoption by getting ad-space at major events and pushing for the acceptance of cryptocurrencies in certain companies. Litecoin has the 'Litecoin Foundation' and they managed to get advertising for Litecoin in some UFC events. More often than not, I think partnerships like these make for good PR for both companies involved - here's a piece on why the Litecoin Foundation thought that this particular partnership was useful:

https://litecoin-foundation.org/litecoin-ufc/

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