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Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

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Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#921

Post by rimliu »

baby wrote: post #881
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #864

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's hold in developing economies is true. But developing economy's hold on their Fiat currency is true as well. So much so that, India is planning to jail anyone who is holding cryptocurrency for 10 years[1]! If this legislation passes, any computer scientist, mathematician, programmer who is working with crypto tokens & block chain can technically be held liable for possessing a crypto currency when they run…

> I don't hold any cryptocurrency due to its impact on energy Just to note, the impact of Libra on energy is very very light compared to the current banking system. It does not use proof of work.

How about impact of Facebook on energy compared to the current banking system?

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#922

Post by neuronic »

growtofill wrote: post #894
IloveHN84 wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot about Apple coin on their credit card. Available at 999$ for the exchange rate.

Just enough to buy the monitor stand.

Pay $1200 for the card and get a monitor stand for free!

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#923

Post by throwaway287391 »

mekoka wrote: post #853

Let's play a game of predictions. Regardless of HN's opinion of Facebook (and regardless of my own for that matter) I predict that this thing will work. This is only one thing my crystal ball showed me. Facebook's presence in developing economies is massive. To the point of being synonymous with "The Internet" in a number of places. But they've had a nagging problem. People in these economies consume contents, but do…

> Multiple agreements will be signed with various financial institutions and probably more with various telecom in those regions, to allow people to load up their accounts with fbcoins and join the Great Internet Spending Frenzy.

This is the part I don't get. I thought we were talking about all-cash economies in regions with essentially no banking, but then you bring up "various financial institutions [...] in those regions". So is it that they have banks but just aren't using them? If so, what is it about FBCoin that's going to suddenly make such people want to go en masse to their bank to get them, if they didn't bother doing so to get all the security and additional payment options that a bank account already offered? (Pardon the ignorance, I'm genuinely trying to understand how this bootstrapping could work.)

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#924

Post by oasisbob »

dan1234 wrote: post #728
taurath wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not 100% steeped in cryptocurrency theory, and so I don't understand why this is presented as if it's agreed on by everyone. What problems does the world have that would be solved by an online, independent [of any nation, presumably?] currency? Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut of every single consumer payment made in much of the world. That ends up being a very, very big number. There are many people a…

> Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut of every single consumer payment made in much of the world. That ends up being a very, very big number. I think you’re overestimating that rate, and by quite a bit. Mastercard’s fees seem to be between 0.2%-1.65%[0] depending on the card and transaction type. I didn’t bother to look for Visa’s rate, but I’d imagine it’d be similar. [0] https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/abo…

That chart is for interchange fees, which is only one part of the fees a merchant will pay. It's the portion which is returned to the issuing bank.

It doesn't include the fees which go to MasterCard, nor does it include the fees paid by the merchant to their merchant bank.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#925

Post by bildung »

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #748
randomvectors wrote: post #406

Earlier 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.

Is it because you trust the banks to keep your money safe? Have a look at what happened in 2013 in Cyprus where they did a bail-in with their customer's money to "save" a bank that was too big to fail. I am with parent on this one.

What happened in Cyprus in 2013? Private banks in a tax haven had rich people from other countries speculating on foreign markets (US housing, among others), hoping to gain above-market returns by doing so. That speculation went sour, resulting in insolvent banks. Those banks also had regular and smaller deposits from local residents, though. In order to protect those people, Cyprus decided to not absorb the speculative losses of those rich people. Instead, the private speculative losses stayed private, which is essentially what a haircut above €100k did.

Now imagine that same situation, but with Facebook at the helm. Either Facebook is in risk of insolvency, or private speculation with zuckbucks going south. Do you think Facebook will just go bancrupt in order to protect the zuckbuck owners? Or will they more probably recreate Cyprus, but way worse for the zuckbuck holders?

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#926

Post by lmm »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #817
vivekd wrote: post #557

This 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…

> I think hackernews has a strong anti-facebook bias Is HN really more anti-Facebook than the general population? If so, why?

I've heard it alleged that HN "top users" are disproportionately Google employees; if so that would explain it.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#928

Post by hjk05 »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #864
mekoka wrote: post #853

Let's play a game of predictions. Regardless of HN's opinion of Facebook (and regardless of my own for that matter) I predict that this thing will work. This is only one thing my crystal ball showed me. Facebook's presence in developing economies is massive. To the point of being synonymous with "The Internet" in a number of places. But they've had a nagging problem. People in these economies consume contents, but do…

Facebook's hold in developing economies is true. But developing economy's hold on their Fiat currency is true as well. So much so that, India is planning to jail anyone who is holding cryptocurrency for 10 years[1]! If this legislation passes, any computer scientist, mathematician, programmer who is working with crypto tokens & block chain can technically be held liable for possessing a crypto currency when they run…

> Yes, the plan to jail those who hold cryptocurrency in a democratic country is preposterous

No it isn’t. We jail people who hold child pornography in democratic countries as well. The core of a democratic country is that it’s governed by democratically elected representatives, not that it’s citizens be allowed access to whatever they want independent of criminal consequences.

I get you and others are calling to the sentiment of “how can we be free if we aren’t free to x” but the value of that sentiment isn’t independent of what X is. You aren’t free to rob banks and you aren’t free to print you own paper currency. Just because crypto is digital and “difficult to stop”(it isn’t though) does not mean that it has to be freely available to business and individuals. It’s still up to our democratically elected representatives to decide if they feel private institutions printing money without control will damage the economy significantly enough to not allow it.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#929

Post by halukakin »

mekoka wrote: post #853

Let's play a game of predictions. Regardless of HN's opinion of Facebook (and regardless of my own for that matter) I predict that this thing will work. This is only one thing my crystal ball showed me. Facebook's presence in developing economies is massive. To the point of being synonymous with "The Internet" in a number of places. But they've had a nagging problem. People in these economies consume contents, but do…

Fixed currencies would only hurt emerging economies. When the economy goes into crisis who will change the interest rates on those currencies and help the economy recover? No one.

Re: Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

#930

Post by hjk05 »

jpmattia wrote: post #546

Again: A ledger that is not decentralized is a bank database, not a cryptocurrency. As near as I can tell, Zuckbucks are nothing more than the JPMorganCryptocurrency but with a bigger consortium. The only difference seems to be who is given write privileges to the database.

True, but the significant difference is that banks are not allowed to print dollar bills without control(they do print bills effectively but with controls). Similarly they aren’t allowed to just start putting credits on people’s credit cards while keeping a separate database to track real vs their issues credits.

But if that separate database is a distributed blockchain based database suddenly they are allowed to do this...

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