Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/06/facebook-libra-launch/

by majinbuu • 7 years ago

254 330 7 years ago

annadane2• 7 years ago

Okay, so like, I'll defend them on this in principle. That said, can you address, like, you know, the myriad scandals you have BEFORE doing something ELSE? It's a bad look.

vnchr2• 7 years ago

The timing isn’t great for the antitrust investigations. It’s not a particularly monopolistic move, but it creates new threat vectors for narratives of their potential villainy.

E.g. “Facebook’s market abuse could easily extend to coercing its millions of ad customers to use its cryptocurrency, enabling nefarious ad campaign spending for political causes without a way to trace the source.”

Kiro• 7 years ago

What scandals have they not addressed?

headsoup• 7 years ago

Probably depends on what you define as 'addressed'...

peteretep4• 7 years ago

That said, can you address, like, you know, the myriad scandals you have BEFORE doing something ELSE

Meh, this feels like the Jordan Peterson "Set Your House in Perfect Order First" fallacy. Plenty of very flawed people (and presumably companies) have literally driven humanity forward.

Not sure I think Facebook's payment processing system is going to drive humanity forward, but insisting people clean up their shit first -- or even be generally reasonable human beings or companies -- excludes most artists, civil rights leaders, and technology companies.

Bakary2• 7 years ago

Do they really need to address scandals? My understanding was that there's always some ruckus but it seems to slide right off their backs in a matter of months.

Arbalest• 7 years ago

No doubt to try and boost their share price.

ajiang• 7 years ago

Public company, that is their job and legal fiduciary duty.

annadane2• 7 years ago

Thing is, is that true with FB with their dual class structure and MZ owning most of it?

maxxxxx• 7 years ago

As far as I know there is no legal requirement to do so.

Reason077• 7 years ago

Let's call it "FaceCoin".

mido22• 7 years ago

or ZuckBucks

Freak_NL• 7 years ago

They should get Whoopi Goldberg to promote it. Worked well enough before.

aphextim2• 7 years ago

FaceBucks?

arzt• 7 years ago

CoinFace?

wz10007• 7 years ago

Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? Since you are dependent on the issuing entity to honour the stated peg, why not just have your balance be an entry in a regular database maintained by that entity? What exactly does the blockchain gain you here?

One thing it does _not_ get you is censorship resistance. If the central authority wants to take away coins from a wallet, all it needs to do is to simply state that it will not honour the peg for coins originating from that wallet. This can be tracked by FIFO, dilution or any other stated accounting principle, and renders the balance in that wallet worthless.

A2017U14• 7 years ago

Have you transferred money across borders to an individual lately? As much as I want to criticize this FB is probably in an excellent position to navigate the kyc minefields.

vbezhenar• 7 years ago

That does not really answer the question.

wz10007• 7 years ago

My question was "what does blockchain bring to the table compared to a regular database?".

How does using a blockchain/cryptocurrency make it easier to sidestep regulations compared to a regular old database?

CaptainZapp2• 7 years ago

Have you transferred money across borders to an individual lately?

Actually yes.

From Switzerland to my brother in Belgium. It was transferred on the same business day at no expense to him or me. Look up SEPA[1] for details.

Just because the American banking system is the complete shits this does not necessarily apply to the rest of the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

nabla9• 7 years ago

What minefields?

Wetern Union, HiFX, PayPal, MoneyGram,Azimo work just fine.

peteretep4• 7 years ago

Have you transferred money across borders to an individual lately?

Yes, frequently. Using TransferWise or FairFx, depending on where the recipient was, but inclusive of Thailand, USA, Ecuador, and Canada. The process was entirely painless, fast, and the transfer was cheap as chips, while bringing to bear the full weight of European bank regulations to protect me as a customer.

briodf• 7 years ago

Have you transferred money across borders with good recommendations lately?

Sending money across borders is historically super complex and expensive, you're right. The WorldBank estimates that it costs an average of 8% in total fees (transfer fees + exchange rate mark-up) to transfer money internationally.

For international transfers with banks and cash-based money transfers, this is still true.

But, in the last 10 years, we've seen hundreds of new online money transfer operators innovating in the field (way before crypto) starting with Xoom in the first wave and then TransferWise, Remitly, WorldRemit, InstaRem, Azimo and hundreds of others...

Sending $300 to Mexico to any agent location to pickup cash will cost you $2 with the cheapest option: https://www.monito.com/send-money/united-states/mexico/usd/m...

$1000 from Canada to a bank account in the Philippines in minutes? $6 https://www.monito.com/send-money/canada/philippines/cad/php...

etc...

These new innovative services are up to 10x cheapers than banks or traditional cash-based money transfers, often faster and much more convenient.

rafiki64• 7 years ago

I can almost guarantee you that regulators will step in and regulate the living crap out of this system if it's found to be actively used for high rates of cross-border transfers and foreign exchange. Governments are a lot smarter than people give them credit for. Once the regulation kicks in, all of a sudden the value of this diminishes greatly.

netrikare• 7 years ago

This will probably be great for people who trade a lot of cryptocurrencies. In some countries crypto-crypto trading is free from taxation. When cyclic crypto bubble bursts and multi-year downtrend starts, you have to sell those cryptocurrencies for USD and pray exchange does not go bankrupt/hacked/exit scam or withdraw and pay taxes. Right now there are some forms of stable coins issued by private companies with no guarantee of buying back issued tokens. Very unstable market. FBCoin may change this. I believe first customers will be cryptcurrency exchanges.

m-i-l3• 7 years ago

Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is? Since you are dependent on the issuing entity to honour the stated peg

In this case there wouldn't be a single issuing entity: "the cryptocurrency would indeed be pegged to a basket of currencies". I had written about the idea of a stablecoin tied to a basket of currencies, e.g. J M Keynes' Bancor and the Word Currency Unit, a few years back.

why not just have your balance be an entry in a regular database maintained by that entity? What exactly does the blockchain gain you here?

If it is controlled by a centralised organisation there would appear to be little point of "blockchain", but maybe as the article says "By introducing a level of decentralization to the governance of the project, Facebook may be able to avoid regulation related to it holding too much power over a global currency".

awrence3• 7 years ago

On paper, you're basically entirely right. Stablecoins including FB are all smokescreens to sell managing fiat on an internal database for you with "blockchain" wrapped around it. This project and stablecoins in general have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies. With that said i can tell you at least one solid reason why any issuer would do it. At a bare minimum they can earn overnight on the holdings since stablecoins don't kick back interest to date. Although with stablecoin competition that should probably start happening until it squeezes to 0 and then it really wouldn't make any sense except to like monetize spying on you I suppose or something. But to take an example, at this point tether is generating 75mm a year for free for it owners at 0 risk. It's the crypto equivalent of a "free" checking account that doesn't pay interest. Not that any exchange was paying interest for fiat deposits in the first place so i'm not sure to what extent that's relevant for cryptoexchangess, but for FB obviously it would since they're starting from 0.

With that said I can imagine one reason why users would care for USD stablecoins. The US has made owning and dealing with USD directly an absolute horrendous nightmare for international users and US citizens abroad following FATCA et al. And this way you can claim you never owned or touched USD which means whoever is holding stablecoins for you instead of USD doesn't have to file truckloads of paperwork for you to open the account. That's a regulatory loophole though one could imagine the US would start complaining about if this really took off.

There's one remote reason I can think of that people would flip to stablecoins vs fiat if they had some tax view that that wasn't a constructive sale and it could benefit from some likekind kind of treatment since its a "crypto" and not a "fiat". It's obviously a silly argument and there's no way the IRS would fall for it (nor do they even accept it between regular cryptos) but i can't speak for other jurisdictions.

omarchowdhury2• 7 years ago

But to take an example, at this point tether is generating 75mm a year for free for it owners at 0 risk.

Tether has got hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funds seized from their banks.

seanalltogether• 7 years ago

This project and stablecoins in general have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies.

I would disagree, using a central authority to sign transactions and exchange crypto back to fiat is fine, but the real power of a cryptocurrency is the ability to generate wallets and create transactions without having to register a profile with a central authority. Whether facebook allows that or not would really determine whether they are a cryptocurrency or just a normal bank.

badfrog• 7 years ago

But to take an example, at this point tether is generating 75mm a year for free for it owners at 0 risk. It's the crypto equivalent of a "free" checking account that doesn't pay interest.

It sounds more like an ETF than a checking account since the coins are directly tied to a "basket". If the SEC agrees, they'll likely eventually require that the dividends and interest from the basket go to the coin owners.

holy_city• 7 years ago

That's a regulatory loophole though one could imagine the US would start complaining about if this really took off.

Seriously. I don't see the fundamental difference in a digital widget that is used to transfer value backed by hard currency from transferring money between accounts by wire. It's like leaving a box on your doorstep by drone instead of truck and saying you're not delivering packages because the mechanism is different.

This sounds to me like they're opening bank accounts and debit payment services by a different name with the added bonus they can devalue your account at will and you have no FICA protection or chargeback mechanism.

fastball• 7 years ago

You might be interested to learn about MakerDAO / DAI[0], which is a stablecoin pegged to USD using CDPs (collateralized debt positions) and decentralized governance.

0: https://makerdao.com/en/dai

cipherpro3• 7 years ago

There's one remote reason I can think of that people would flip to stablecoins vs fiat if they had some tax view that that wasn't a constructive sale and it could benefit from some likekind kind of treatment since its a "crypto" and not a "fiat". It's obviously a silly argument and there's no way the IRS would fall for it (nor do they even accept it between regular cryptos) but i can't speak for other jurisdictions.

The IRS have already made explicit that crypto to crypto is taxable and treated as capital gains/loss. Some stay in stablecoin so that they can be more liquid in the ecosystem. Simply, there are more exchange pairs for stablecoins, and some stablecoin allow storage in personal hardware wallet rather than exchanges.

granaldo2• 7 years ago

somehow there seem to be many roll outs of stable coins of late.. the infamous Tether, DAI by Maker, USDC by Circle, GUSD by Gemini, TUSD and countless more https://www.coingecko.com/en?category_id=36&view=market

wtfrmyinitials• 7 years ago

Worth noting that Maker is different than those other because there's no central authority holding fiat money to maintain the peg. Their stablecoin Dai is minted "out of thin air" and the price peg is maintained via an interest rate mechanism built into the smart contract.

will_brown6• 7 years ago

Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is?

What was the point of arcades taking your quarters and issuing you tokens for the machines? Why not just allow the machines to take your quarters?

The idea is for the issuer to take real money from you and issue you Monopoly money which the issuer can track and control. In a worst case scenario the issuer can make up new rules (change their terms and conditions on you) or declare bankruptcy/dissolve and not honor the redemption of your stable coins at all.

mc32• 7 years ago

And importantly the tokens can be unilaterally devalued without having to change the slots or recalibrate. So instead of 25¢ and next step being 50¢ if using the same config, they can charge you 27, or 48 or 50¢ for the token and not have to reconfigure the machine one bit.

bduerst• 7 years ago

As many mobile app games have shown, you don't need a cryptocurrency to achieve this, just some arbitrary point system. I think GP was asking, "Why Cryptocurrency?" since the benefits of blockchain don't really translate to this system.

JudgeWapner• 7 years ago

don't forget, they can "get hacked", and, "whelp, it's over guys. we promise to do whatever we can to recover the lost coins. the case has been turned over to law enforcement. We won't give up hope that someday they may be able to recover something."

InvisibleCities• 7 years ago

But that doesn't really answer the question being asked. If the cryptocurrency is completely controlled by a centralized authority who has absolute rights over the system, why bother with the technical and cognitive hurdles of using a blockchain? A standard ledger in a centralized database is more than adequate for that task, and much easier to maintain.

r00fus• 7 years ago

Then why doesn't Facebook just go the Microsoft route and have "points"? (FB already has a credits system).

idlewords2• 7 years ago

The point of arcade tokens is to prevent people breaking in to machines, feeding them slugs instead of coins, and reduce the number of employees with access to unlimited free quarters.

dbt00• 7 years ago

The point was to reduce the opportunity for insider cash theft while servicing machines?

bitxbitxbitcoin• 7 years ago

That is a beautiful analogy.

mrlala• 7 years ago

Can anyone explain what the point of a pegged cryptocurrency is?

Because it has a completely stable value, from the standpoint of someone who always uses that currency. Let's say it's pegged to USD. Boom, if I'm in the US and everything I do is in USD, this cryptocurrency can suddenly be the same as actual dollars from my standpoint. There's virtually no difference.

The USD has an almost completely stable value to the standard person in the US. Everything they do is in USD. They don't care about some fluctuations vs other currencies vs EUR etc. I'm not saying there are zero affects, of course there are, but there's really nothing they can do about it. EUR goes up 10% to the USD, ok something they buy which is imported from europe is maybe 10% more expensive in USD.. there is nothing they can do about that, so the USD is still completely stable from their perspective. It's not like most people are saying "Oh 1% of my purchases this year are coming from Europe, so I'm going to hold 1% of my assets in EUR to mitigate this affect".

What exactly does the blockchain gain you here?

Given the above, that means that the crypto currency is now 100% the same as holding USD. I'm not holding cyrpto as a diversifier, or to get magically rich by a big crypto move. I would actually hold crypto TO USE IT.

Maybe I want to send my brother $50 who lives in a different place. Wouldn't it be cool to just send some crypto knowing that it's virtually exactly $50 when I send it and always after that? Open the phone on some app, click a button and boom. Without having to worry about any intermediary bank etc.

This whole notion that crypto SHOULD NOT be pegged is looking at some dystopian future where a currency like the USD is not stable anymore. And hey, I'm not saying that could never happen.. but the world will have pretty much exploded if that ever happens so I'm not sure your cryptocurrency will help much in that case.

Crypto right now is a get rich quick scheme with extremely little actual use cases. Pegging one to the USD would make it usable- which should be the whole point...

tim3335• 7 years ago

The main use so far has been to allow crypto exchanges to let you trade between cyptocurrencies and dollar equivalents without getting involved with banking regulations or banks. If you set up a crypto exchange doing say bitcoin - usdt, it's basically just software you can upload without needing accounts, licenses etc assuming the owners are nominally not in regulated countries.

thefounder• 7 years ago

Well, one good reason to use cryptocurrencies is that you don't have to deal with visa/mastercard crap. You can send and accept payments without all kind of requirements(i.e pci).

Stable coins are really what bitcoin should have been: digital money! Now bitcoin is just a big casino owned and run by dubious entities/exchangers/trading platforms with no oversight.

akerro• 7 years ago

They're doing it to skirt GDPR laws. When GDPR passed, all users were automatically opted out of personal data sharing, targeted marketing, etc. With ZuckCoin, they're going to pay users a small amount of coins to use the site, but in order for users to be eligible for that they'll be required to opt into all of the personal data sharing stuff. And since it will be considered a monetary transaction, Facebook will be required to keep the data from every transaction for 10 years for tax purposes. People won't even be able to ask that Facebook delete their data because they'll be required to store it for 10 years.

edit: If you want to listen to the explanation in more detail, Meanhash explained it on a recent episode of the Hashr8 podcast: https://h4shr8.libsyn.com/meanhash

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/bx9dik/face...

PeterisP3• 7 years ago

I don't see how that brings any benefits GDPR-wise.

"required to opt into" doesn't count as freely given consent, so it doesn't change anything; GDPR-wise doing this is exactly the same as simply using the data without asking for the opt-in.

If they're "required to keep the data from every transaction for 10 years for tax purposes" means that they're allowed to use that data for that particular purpose only; GDPR-wise taking data gathered for tax purposes and using it for ad targeting is just as forbidden as "simply" taking data without permission and using it for ad targeting.

bufferoverflow• 7 years ago

There's only one real advantage of a pegged crypto currency: easy and cheap transfer. It's generally a pain in the ass to move money, everyone wants a cut. Wire transfer, international wire tranfer, paypal - they all want their cut. For a simple update of a single row in some database.

bparsons• 7 years ago

I suspect the answer is micro transactions.

No one has figured out how to do it at scale using USD. Cryptocurrency theoretically offers a solution, but is still mostly unproven.

Whoever figures it out could potentially save the news business.

gesman• 7 years ago

Extra detailed tracking of users.

anonymous51334• 7 years ago

One potential reason is you can get the token listed on a cryptocurrency exchange but other than that. I do not know. If you use cyrptocurrency you are almost always better off with a decentralized crypto.

rafiki64• 7 years ago

You asked two different questions. I'm not going to answer the one about why Facebook is creating a pegged cryptocurrency (other commenters have done a good job of that).

As for the value of blockchain here, there is absolutely none. Facebook is creating a currency and labeling it a cryptocurrency which denotes the use of a blockchain, when in reality considering they're the central issuing authority of the currency and are the ones who determine it's value/inflation rate (i.e. pegging as you rightly described). Therefore using a blockchain for decentralized settlement and provenance here serves absolutely no real purpose and you are correct in pointing out that they can just keep everything in a database (which is likely what they will actually do).

devit• 7 years ago

It prevents covert malicious behavior by the issuer (i.e. they can't just change a database entry and deny they did so).

elcomet2• 7 years ago

But they can since they control the chain.

Barrin922• 7 years ago

how often has your bank or paypal suddenly changed the balance in your account? This is a fictional problem because no large institution is going to cheat you out of twenty bucks to risk a billion dollar lawsuit and their customers.

olalonde3• 7 years ago

Funny how 90% of the commenters seem to totally miss parent's point. We get why a pegged digital currency is useful, just not why it has to be a "blockchain".

A pegged "cryptocurrency" can just be designed as a centralized service (e.g. a REST API backed by a traditional database) without losing any of its properties. The "crypto" and "blockchain" bits are marketing.

A good rule of thumb is this: could someone have come up with this pre-Bitcoin? If the answer is yes, it's not a (decentralized) cryptocurrency.

stale20026• 7 years ago

A "Blockchain" is merely a public database. That's it.

Git is a Blockchain. Do you think that git is useless?

pmorici• 7 years ago

Is Facebook going to get a banking license? If not this lets them offer bank like services while holding everyone's deposits and making money off the interest.

HALtheWise• 7 years ago

I think the primary value from having a public hash chain in this case is that Facebook can't really do malicious things secretly. If they were to perform the procedure you describe, it would require very publicly listing all the accounts they are devaluing, and it isn't actually obvious that the impact on the value of the coins in those accounts would be significant. The value of the USD didn't instantly drop when it stopped being backed by the gold standard, and a coin that Facebook refuse to trade for cash would just be a "fiat" version of the currency, which could definitely retain value.

Today, when PayPal or Patreon shuts down an account, we only find out if that person complains and anybody pays attention. I imagine creators might prefer a platform that doesn't have obvious ways to easily shut them down, and where Facebook can claim to a court that doing so requires fundamentally compromising the security of the system.

cipherpro3• 7 years ago

The few reasons to use blockchain at this time is to maintain an optic of trust: that even if you don't fully trust the provider of the token, you can trust the transparency provided by the technology. My judgment is that FB is positioning itself to be ready for when or if the space finds its "mosaic" moment. Otherwise, it is still an investment in a novel tech that is already proven useful for money transference; large sums of money have already been put up by the sector to mitigate and update regulatory risk and compliance.

arisAlexis3• 7 years ago

no fees, easy to send money to relatives abroad. PayPal was for eBay. this is for FB

naringas• 7 years ago

with zero fees via Facebook products including Messenger and WhatsApp

reminds me of the classic "If You're Not Paying For It, You Become The Product"

edit: the prototypical crypto (bitcoin) has fees as the final (after there's no more new btc) incentive for miners to process transactions. but this doesn't?

probably we'll have to look at their white paper but if Facebook is the only actor running this network why make it a cryptocurrency at all?

decoyworker• 7 years ago

You're not off the hook if you pay either. Paying for something doesn't necessarily mean you aren't the product.

peteretep4• 7 years ago

if Facebook is the only actor running this network why make it a cryptocurrency at all?

Marketing.

elliekelly2• 7 years ago

but if Facebook is the only actor running this network why make it a cryptocurrency at all?

They're selling a seat at the governance table for $10 million. I suspect in an effort to put this new token in the decentralized/not a security bucket the SEC views ETH. That allows them to avoid registration and the enforcement headache Kik is currently dealing with. Quite clever on Facebook's part. Zuckerberg is smart enough to give up a bit of control and toe the line ("decentralized"... among his Wall Street friends) rather than retain complete control and run head-first into a regulatory brick wall. FTA:

Facebook is in talks to create an independent foundation to oversee its cryptocurrency, The Information reports. It’s asking companies to pay $10 million to operate a node that can validate transactions made with its cryptocurrency in exchange for a say in governance of the token. It’s possible that node operators could benefit financially too. By introducing a level of decentralization to the governance of the project, Facebook may be able to avoid regulation related to it holding too much power over a global currency.

mihaifm2• 7 years ago

If you're interested in conspiracy theories, this may be a way for Facebook to circumvent GDPR, since financial data needs to be kept for at least 10 years. Once you make any trade using this currency, you won't be able to request deletion of personal data, since it's required to be kept as financial information.

vcavallo2• 7 years ago

why couldn’t they delete everything but your trade data?

mihaifm2• 7 years ago

At the minimum they'd need to store your name and address, probably birthdate too. It would just complicate the whole process of leaving Facebook.

Lordarminius3• 7 years ago

Circumventing GDPR might not be the principal aim, but I'm sure it's a nice side effect.

PeterisP3• 7 years ago

What benefit does Facebook gain from getting the ability to store my personal data for tax purposes? That doesn't give them the permission to do anything else with it anyway.

If they were going to use the "for tax purposes" data for ad targeting or something else, then that's a GDPR violation - if they're going to intentionally violate GDPR, then they might as well simply store and use the data without permission and lie that it's been deleted; there's no need to bother with the charade.

koolba• 7 years ago

I think the angle here is international blockchain Venmo with a goal to convince the non-destitute Facebook holdouts to finally sign up so that they can commerce.

For the record I doubt that will work. The early adopters will be scammers and people duped into thinking this is their get rich quick opportunity.

omarchowdhury2• 7 years ago

The early adopters will be scammers and people duped into thinking this is their get rich quick opportunity.

It's a stablecoin. There's no get rich opportunity.

tveita• 7 years ago

If it really is pegged to a basket of multiple currencies that makes it a bit of a forex instrument, not just a 1:1 exchange. Someone, somewhere could probably make a bit of money on mispricing or market movements.

kolinko2• 7 years ago

A few points:

- some pegged currencies are still decentralised (e.g. MakerDAO) - they rely solely on smart contracts - even with a centralised peg, you have to trust an organisation to keep the collateral, but the contract can state that anyone can move the funds around, so the managing organisation cannot just remove funds at will

Also, compared to a centralised database, you have an interoperability aspect - if it's just an organisation keeping everyone's balances, it's hard to make those balances interact with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem (e.g. how do you participate in an ICO, if the crypto balances are stored in one system, and token balances are stored in another? implement APIs for every single one of them?)

wz10007• 7 years ago

Also, compared to a centralised database, you have an interoperability aspect - if it's just an organisation keeping everyone's balances, it's hard to make those balances interact with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem (e.g. how do you participate in an ICO, if the crypto balances are stored in one system, and token balances are stored in another? implement APIs for every single one of them?)

I'm pretty sure its much easier to make a single request to a single well defined server, as opposed to connecting with a swarm of peers, downloading the entire blockchain, verifying it, and computing your balance by traversing the entire history.

Its not like there is some universal "blockchain API" that computers come from the factory ready to understand. Specialised code has to be written to deal with every new cryptocurrency.

lowracle• 7 years ago

MakerDAO is not decentralised, simply because the ETH/USD price feed isn't decentralised. If the servers providing the feed get hacked, say goodbye to your ETH collateral.

mbrock10• 7 years ago

Stakeholder vote elects a smart contract that takes the median of dozens of price feeds controlled by various independent parties, so it's decentralized to some extent, and decentralization is not a clear-cut binary attribute.

momentmaker• 7 years ago

They might integrate with ChainLink, a decentralized oracle network: https://chain.link

xchaotic• 7 years ago

I'm sorry but you're just muddying the water here - Facebook's currency is centralised by both Facebook and peg to USD and there's no need for interoperability at the currency level - Facebook will provide the APIs for working with the currency. As envisioned by Facebook, the whole 'crypto' aspect of it is pointless.

granaldo2• 7 years ago

they are struggling to keep the peg. indeed how much magic central banks are using to maintain a stable currency

Hermel• 7 years ago

You are exactly right and it’s astonishing how most of the commenters here are confident about their views despite not getting it.

To provide another example besides the ICO: you can use a pegged blockchain-based coin to trade on Uniswap or any other decentralized exchange. This would not work with the database based coin. The idea is not to gain efficiency, the idea is to gain interoperability with the blockchain ecosystem.

mbrock10• 7 years ago

Facebook's blockchain will most likely be a consortium of corporate validators. In this case you could say that the blockchain is "just" a normal distributed append-only hash-linked ledger with public verifiable records, but nowadays the more concise term for that is "blockchain."

wz10007• 7 years ago

Every git repository counts as a blockchain by that definition.

pauletienney• 7 years ago

except for "append-only" and "verifiable records"

mbrock10• 7 years ago

Indeed you could even think of them as embodying the "proof of work" principle in that you naturally look for the branch with the most work done to find the true Schelling point fork for your own contributions.

(By the way, I often see these two points in the same thread: "blockchains should be replaced with centralized SQL databases" and "Git repositories are just like blockchains" which makes me wonder if Git repositories also ought to be replaced with centralized SQL databases.)

bigiain2• 7 years ago

Yes.

Which is oe of the reasons my eyes roll so hard when "business types" and "idea guys" decide they need to explain "blockchain" to me, but have never heard of Merkel Trees...

momokoko• 7 years ago

Merkle Tree.

Shorel• 7 years ago

Only if a javascript file counts as an entry in a ledger.

stale20026• 7 years ago

Yes! They are!

Git repos are absolutely Blockchains!

People don't understand how simple the concept of Blockchain is.

drexlspivey• 7 years ago

Your definition is missing the "block" from blockchain and it's also missing a concensus protocol.

mbrock10• 7 years ago

Well obviously a distributed database needs a consensus protocol.

chvid• 7 years ago

The most logical thing for Facebook would be to create something similar to the Chinese payment systems Alipay and WeChat Pay, bound directly to your Facebook account and maybe even issuing credit to some accounts. Completely different from a pseudonymous cash-like cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or Tether.

Mengkudulangsat• 7 years ago

Those are single-market, single-currency products no? Facebook wants one coin to serve all it's 2.4bn users - a larger user base than USD I might add.

m-i-l3• 7 years ago

To all the cryptocurrency devotees dreaming of a new world cryptocurrency displacing existing government-backed central banks - be careful what you wish for, it just might come true. This might be the next phase of surveillance capitalism, like Orwell except driven by a private corporation for profit rather than accountable governments for "the greater good".

qwsxyh• 7 years ago

You say that as if that's not what they want.

m-i-l3• 7 years ago

Well given the pseudoanonymous nature of the original cryptocurrency, and its popularity for illegal activities, I would assume not. But maybe it is more about rampant capitalism and maximise-personal-profit-at-whatever-cost nowadays.

giaour• 7 years ago

From Facebook's perspective, the advantage is that everyone has already forfeited any expectation of privacy wrt financial transactions, since they're recorded on a public ledger. They would be able to link certain transaction events (i.e., ones that happen over Messenger or other Facebook properties) to real identities, so this project will give them tons of data to mine

gchokov• 7 years ago

Haven’t thought about this but it makes perfect sense. Thank you for providing this insight. I guess, ad companies will be ad companies at the end of the day. They will do everything for better targeting and more data.

jacobush• 7 years ago

This made me a little sick to my stomach. I thought I was jaded, but imagine the worlds economy running in FB.

TazeTSchnitzel3• 7 years ago

They probably want to be the West's WeChat.

dharma12• 7 years ago

Have they said no private transactions supported?

floor_• 7 years ago

I find it funny that bitcoin fails to do what it was created to do and that people are so invested in it they can't change it or let it die. You can't buy a cup of coffee without paying large confirmation fees or delaying the transaction for day to weeks. There was talk about decentralizing smaller transactions to ease up on that but that defeats the whole purpose of bitcoin.

lexapro• 7 years ago

With https://lightning.network you can.

Lordarminius3• 7 years ago

Many new inventions fail to do what they set out to originally do.That does not make them less valuable. Viagra started out as an anti-angina drug, Coca cola was originally a cough syrup, VCRs found an initial niche in recording porn.

If Bitcoin fails as a currency but succeeds as a store of value, that's still a win.

throwayEngineer• 7 years ago

I use Shift for coffee purchases and don't pay fees.

People built on top of Bitcoin.

onion-soup2• 7 years ago

You can't buy a cup of coffee without paying large confirmation fees or delaying the transaction for day to weeks

Yes you can. On BSV which is the legacy bitcoin

stale20026• 7 years ago

Hahahah!

Let me know when Craig Wright actually signs the genesis block, and cryptographicly proves that he is Satoshi, and does so publicly in a way that I can personally verify.

When that happens, I will give you 1000$ worth of BSV.

It won't happen though.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 7 years ago

It could be used to offer low or no-fee payments between friends or remittance of earnings to familys from migrant workers abroad who are often gouged by money transfer services.

Doesn’t Transferwise already fill this niche? These days you can send several hundred dollars to and from the US for around $2-4 in fees, whereas the fees used to be $40-60 from traditional banks or Western Union.

stvswn2• 7 years ago

So you're saying you understand the value proposition and that it's been successful elsewhere, but you don't understand why Facebook would want to do it, or why it might make sense for the company who already has messaging apps on billions of phones?

cs702• 7 years ago

Ultimately, the goal seems to be "one currency to rule them all." The peg may prove necessary only initially, to gain confidence.

Unlike most other currencies, Facebook's new currency will be readily available to and easily usable by virtually everyone everywhere, and it will likely have very low transaction costs -- much lower than those of most financial intermediaries. You will be able to use it as easily from New York as from Timbuktu, bypassing the inefficiencies and high fees of the legacy financial system.

Why use traditional nation-backed money when you can click a button on your phone instead?

Facebook seems to be gradually morphing into a sort of planet-wide nation.

empath75• 7 years ago

They’ll also be able to track more purchases people make to sell you more ads

stephen_g• 7 years ago

Why use traditional nation-backed money when you can click a button on your phone instead?

Wait, you can't do that with your nation-backed currency? In Australia, I can literally open my bank app and send money to any Australian account with just a phone number and they receive it in 30 seconds or so with no fees...

Yeah, international transfers are a little harder, but for domestic transfers it's super easy.

stickfigure• 7 years ago

Here in the US, moving money is a huge PITA. Unless you both bank at the same bank, money usually takes days to move. And banking at the same bank is no guarantee it will happen faster.

Private party transactions up into the thousands of dollars (say, buying a used car) generally require cash.

It's incredibly archaic.

TazeTSchnitzel3• 7 years ago

It's not like there isn't already tons of innovation in the fast-international-transfers space. PayPal is one and has been around for years. TransferWise is newer and direct-to-your-account.

negamax3• 7 years ago

I will revisit this thread in 2021 just to see how wrong everyone was. FB has billions of users that interact with its product everyday. People who make plans, attend events, split all sort of bills.

A borderless stablecoin will be a gamechanger. It can fuel commerce but above that it will kill many middlemen and rightly so.

fullshark• 7 years ago

A payments system on Facebook makes a ton of sense and would be very useful. I just don't get why it has to be cryptocurrency.

negamax3• 7 years ago

Biggest benefit of using blockchain and cryptocurrency here is open trust (this term is the best way I can think about describing this). Any internal database is subject to all kind of human and technical errors. But with a network of trusted parties that solves the Byzantine Generals Problem. This becomes secure and trusted as trust is given. No one can hack it at will without taking the 50% of the network down and compromising multiple entities. This is a bizarre technical, social and economic feat. I wish Apple was the one pulling this instead of FB. But quite certainly there are more FB users than iPhone users.

tim3335• 7 years ago

A feature of cryptocurrencies like ethereum or bitcoin is they can be anonymous and unregulated which can make small transactions cheap. You can get an ethereum address and I can send you 10c worth of it for maybe 2c in costs and that's it. To do similar in fiat we each need financial institutions which may have to spend a fair bit each to do KYC on us. It remains to be seen where Facebook will fit on the regulated/unregulated spectrum. Somewhere between the two I imagine.

dead_mall• 7 years ago

What else would it be? Some in house software, mysql based currency system?

What is it about cryptocurrency that people still don't get?

zeroxfe• 7 years ago

Two things I can think of:

- you can get transparency (the entire ledger must be public, so you reduce the risk of many kids of internal fraud and manipulation.)

- you can use these coins outside the facebook ecosystem -- I can't think of immediate value here, but I can see a long play where Facebook can turn into a bank

miguelmota• 7 years ago

Cryptocurrencies are trustless in principle. You don’t have to trust that FB updated your balance in their database correctly or tampered with historical data when you can simply pull all the transaction history from the blockchain and verify for yourself and with peers from the network.

flycaliguy2• 7 years ago

Don’t forget that Facebook is extremely capable of reading the public. It could be a marketing tool designed to capture early adaptors.

hn_throwaway_99• 7 years ago

Facebook already had Facebook Credits around 2011-2012, but it was killed in 2013.

stvswn2• 7 years ago

I agree to the extent that many seem to acknowledge the transfer and remittance use case but seem to think that the market is already filled by niche players -- the fact that FB doesn't have to contend with network effects because everyone already has Messenger and/or WhatsApp is a huge deal.

It is simultaneously the case that FB can't build this and then magically be exempt from each jurisdiction's laws related to cross-border transfers. It's not like a real decentralized coin where there's no real enforcement mechanism, each government will know exactly where to knock and FB will play ball with reporting requirements, etc.

I think the right analogy is that they want to be to the rest of the world what AliPay is to China -- ubiquitious, so that it will very quickly be the case that you know everyone supports it in the world so you don't need to carry around your credit cards. Sort of like what Apple and Google Pay would want to be but with a larger incentive for retailers to adopt it as it has instantly higher penetration among users. It also might be more likely that messaging payments to a retailer becomes the norm instead of NFC (like how everyone in China pays for a restaurant check with AliPay by simply sending payment via message to the address, usually on the table in a QR code).

I'm not sure that it needs to be a blockchain but I assume it's about making the economics work by cutting out middlemen. If FB gets everyone to use this in their daily lives, however, it'll be a huge win for FB even if they don't make money on it directly -- because purchase data is very valuable, but also because you can't feasibly get rid of FB once it becomes your normal payment method.

skizm• 7 years ago

Wouldn’t Facebook just become the middleman instead of visa or whoever?

013a4• 7 years ago

Every new financal technology tries to kill the existing middlemen, then replace them with new middlemen who promise to be better. Turns out, these new middlemen (1) never fully comprehend how complex modern finance is, which raises costs, and (2) are human and thus become corrupt, whether subtly or unsubtly, over time.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that, in conjunction with point (1), many of these modern finance plays also totally fail to comprehend the vast investment into technology that traditional finance companies have made. They see a shitty iOS app, think "wow Old School Bank is never going to understand computers, let's disrupt them", so they start with an amazing iOS app, then struggle to reliably implement the rest of the stuff that matters (process automation, scalability, government relationships, customer support).

Point being, the world turns, time goes on, the players might change, but the game doesn't.

negamax3• 7 years ago

I don't understand your point. No one is disagreeing about the contribution that big finance has made in shaping our current systems. FB raised money, got listed. There's tons of financial system which helped them and help everyone from invoices to making a trip everyday.

But that doesn't mean something better can't come up. People don't hate banks for the monolith but their monopoly like nature that had stifled innovation and displayed outright criminal behavior. Don't forget 2008 recession was triggered by banks. Recent libor scandal..

About the technology investments. I would argue against this. Banks are more regulatory and defend my turf play than a technology play. Have you ever worked for a bank or any finance facing institution. There's layers and layers of clutter. Whole party is one big monolith, sucking money from places that it doesn't deserve.

Biggest benefit banks provide as in traditional banks is the account and trust that, that money in the account will remain on the name of holder. That trust as well was breached multiple times during withdrawal limits and freezes.

We all need better alternative. May be FB won't be the one. May be bank themselves will become more open and lean. But someone needs to push. There's a lots of money to be made and quite frankly FB deserves it for trying.

baby5• 7 years ago

You're saying that yet Monzo and Revolut (the cool iOS apps you're mentioning) are killing the banking system already in Europe/UK.

itslennysfault2• 7 years ago

Why do they need a crypto currency to achieve that? How is it superior to just a number in a database to represents your balance on facebook? Facebook is centralized what advantage does a decentralized currency have for them?

Venmo/Paypal seem to have no problem achieving this without a blockchain.

brink• 7 years ago

If you want global adoption, make it open. That's what Android does. That's what Linux does. That's what cryptocurrency achieves. That's what Facebook wants.

ilaksh2• 7 years ago

I am all for borderless stablecoins and agree with everything you say except that you imply that we should let Facebook and and control it, which makes no sense.

anonymous51334• 7 years ago

Bingo. I completely agree. Yes, it is kind of a hassle to have FB using this globalcoin rather than just use a standard decentralized crypto but it is a start at least.

wbronitsky2• 7 years ago

You might have a good point, but why present it in this way? It is needlessly condescending and makes people want to not believe you. You could have easily stated your case for how much utility and adoption you think this will have without looking down your nose at people who hold a different opinion.

Comments like this devalue the entire conversation being had here by pushing people either towards twitter style shitposting/flamewars, which are terrible ways to have conversations, or simply causing those who would like to comment to not engage. Either way, can you not?

wbronitsky2• 7 years ago

Wow, downvoted for pointing out the shitty tenor of conversation on this site. I don't know why I participate any more

rafiki64• 7 years ago

I don't understand why you're assuming "everyone" here will be wrong. I have yet to see a comment that has detracted from the value this brings to Facebook. What doesn't make any level of sense is why it's being labeled a cryptocurrency. It's a currency controlled by Facebook. That's no different than regular money issued by a central bank.

kjar• 7 years ago

Facebucks? Rhymes with...

no1youknowz• 7 years ago

Who knew back in 1988 that what the Economist predicted would come true?

https://i.imgur.com/mWj0d3f.png

tim3335• 7 years ago

Though I think they were predicting a currency that would replace national currencies in the manner of the Euro which I can't see Facebook's doing.

Lxr• 7 years ago

What is the best way to profit from all this crypto hype, as a rational person who’s convinced all coins will eventually go to zero?

foobarzzi• 7 years ago

You can go on deribit.com or bitmex.com and buy put options or sell future contracts.

b_tterc_p3• 7 years ago

A rational person would observe that something with no intrinsic value could very well be overpriced far longer than you can afford to short.

tim3335• 7 years ago

Ironically it may be to buy something like bitcoin and sell when it goes up. Reasoning: a) there are obviously hype believers who will buy and push the price up when optimistic and b) they tend not to sell being believers whereas as a skeptic you can.

cygaril• 7 years ago

Getting involved is risky - even if you are right (and I think you are), the price could still increase by a large amount for a long time before sense reasserts itself.

As Keynes apparently did not say: "The market can stay irrational a lot longer than you can stay solvent."

If you hit your trading / credit limits you could lose a lot of money despite being right in the long run.

And as Keynes definitely did say, "In the long run, we are all dead."

anonymous51334• 7 years ago

Pretty sure facebook coin is a stable coin. You cant make money trading it. You can only make money by using it for trading.

WilliamEdward• 7 years ago

Scam others.

rchaud2• 7 years ago

Start offering a $99 course on how to profit from FB Libra. Doesn't matter if you don't know anything about it, because the people who buy shovels during a gold rush usually know even less.

kitten_smuggler2• 7 years ago

My main curiosity with this is whether or not self-custody will be an option, or if it will be a hybridized Venmo/Blockhain implementation that is limited to the FB app as the only wallet.

azhng• 7 years ago

SEC: we are going to fine Kik alot of money for unauthorized ICO

Facebook: hold my beer

kitten_smuggler2• 7 years ago

This is not an ICO.

nbrempel• 7 years ago

I’m not sure how anyone has even the slightest trust in Facebook anymore.

Why is it that people still use the service? Is convenience really that powerful?

tim3335• 7 years ago

I use Facebook. Is there any way they can harm me as a result apart from maybe trying to show adverts which I don't see. (I use uBlock and fbpurity).

itslennysfault2• 7 years ago

It's more big picture. Your individual data is useless. The data of a huge % of the US (or other country, or planet) is extremely powerful. As a facebook user you contribute to that data.

So, no you individually using fb or not doesn't really matter other than on principle. I don't use it because I find them morally reprehensible, but I also understand my boycott is purely symbolic unless another 100m or so people join me (probably won't happen).

root_axis• 7 years ago

Society is addicted. Many people even consider Facebook so vital to everyday life that they believe access to Facebook is a right that the government should guarantee to its citizens. This is a cultural problem that is difficult to tackle, but I think it'll require a cultural shift before people realize that Facebook is just a website that they don't have to use.

Bakary2• 7 years ago

I have exactly zero trust in Facebook but I have had so many irritating moments and missed opportunities due to ditching my account years ago that I am seriously considering reopening it again.

The main aspect I'm considering these days is that I'm not important in the grand scheme of things so there's no rational reason to increase difficulty in things that do really matter such as having memorable experiences while I can in exchange for privacy or to make some statement. In a sense, I will have privacy anyway out of just being a data point out of billions.

It's not that Facebook is convenient but rather that not having it can be inconvenient depending on your context.

jaakl• 7 years ago

You have zero trust in Facebook, and Facebook has zero trust in you. Perfect use case for blockchain, right?

rchaud2• 7 years ago

People are just habituated towards opening FB every time they're bored. I used to do that myself until a few years back. Consumers aren't buying anything on FB though, but advertisers are.

Considering how many veritable snake oil products gets advertised the platform, not to mention political propaganda pushed as "promoted posts", I can't help but wonder if this push to crypto is FB's way of hiding who its ad buyers are in the future.

b_tterc_p3• 7 years ago

I don’t think this will be particularly successful. We already have a variety of ways to send money. Yes Facebook is big, but so is, say, Apple and it’s Apple Pay functionality.

I don’t know what use case this solves that isn’t fairly competitive already although it will probably have a bitcoin style valuation bubble. It’s also sort of capped in its utility. If it overshadows national government currencies... the governments will be incentivized to block it. That was true of Bitcoin but it’s doubly true of Facebook. And Facebook has to abide by laws so it can’t just quietly work regardless of regulations like other crypto.

And what can I buy with this? If I need to convert to dollars, is an easy facecoin swap plus a facecoin to dollars swap really be more convenient?

Edit: on Apple Pay, I’m pretty sure you can send cash. But I don’t know, because I haven’t ever had the need to do this... which is I suppose my point.

akdfd• 7 years ago

it will probably have a bitcoin style valuation bubble

It's a stable coin so it can't have such a bubble. It's main utility will probably only be cross border p2p payments for countries that allow it.

b_tterc_p3• 7 years ago

That doesn’t feel like something that’s useful for messenger integration? Messenger integration implies to me local transactions for minor debts and splitting fares and what not.

golergka• 7 years ago

Payment system built into Facebook will be incredibly successful. Most small businesses don't even bother with a website, nowadays a Facebook group and Instagram account is enough - so it's only natural to process payments there as well.

However, it is not going to damage Bitcoin in any way. Main use case for Bitcoin is buying drugs. No one is going to be paying for drugs with a currency tied to their real-world identity.

ausbah• 7 years ago

I have long been skeptical of cryptocurrencies, but I think that such beliefs are rooted more in crappy misapplications and hype then reality. Can anyone link some sources that may be able to change my mind?

loriverkutya• 7 years ago

Am I the only one concerned about giving even more information to Facebook about my spending?

JackFr• 7 years ago

Is there anything more here than a payment system?

jbverschoor• 7 years ago

More and more I get the feeling that the majority of the HN crowd are FB employees.

Any other post about crypto is a scam. Any other tech than react is immature. Etc etc.

Have fun at FB guys, I hope your share vest soon

xwdv• 7 years ago

Not an FB employee but like many HN members with assets in tech stocks, a sizable portion of my portfolio consists of FB stock from the days when it was around $50.

FB has made me good money, and I don’t get shaken by what I see on the news. At the end of the day, FB still does more good things than bad, and I am more likely to take them seriously when they set out on a new venture.

news_to_me• 7 years ago

At the end of the day, FB still does more good things than bad

I don't think this is a claim you can make these days without a good argument behind it. It certainly seems false to me.

I am more likely to take them seriously when they set out on a new venture

This is real, though. Whatever FB are, they're not dumb and whatever they do should be taken seriously.

NoodleIncident• 7 years ago

Are you joking? In every thread about FB besides this one, almost every single comment actively bashes FB.

seangrant• 7 years ago

This is something I've wondered... Do all Facebook/Google employees drink the Kool aid? Are there no privacy proponents?

ipsum2• 7 years ago

This is objectively wrong. Take a look at how often Facebook is mentioned in the title of submissions in the last month, sorted by number of upvotes: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=facebook&sort=byPopularity&pre...

The entire top 10 are entirely negative of Facebook.

elevenoh• 7 years ago

There's def a sizeable representation of FB folks on HN, know some personally.

dang• 7 years ago

This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask you not to post insinuations about astroturfing. Those are internet poison and nearly always imaginary. (I've written about this ad nasueum for anyone who wants more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...).

So please don't do that, and please don't post unsubstantive comments in general. We're hoping for thoughtful conversation here, not flames.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

archgoon• 7 years ago

And here I thought that the zuccoins in the last FacebookCTF was an obvious joke.

LMYahooTFY• 7 years ago

Were there flags that were supposedly "zuckcoins" or something similar?

jshowa3• 7 years ago

A cryptocurrency that violates one of the main tenants of cryptocurrencies. The fact is doesn't require a centralized authority. This is basically Twitch bits and shouldn't be classified as a cryptocurrency. As others have stated, probably the only reason to use one is because an existing blockchain can simply be used under a new brand.

52-6F-622• 7 years ago

Didn't Kik try and do something similar as well and came under fire from the SEC?

sdinsn• 7 years ago

Kik's problem was they advertised it as an investment and promised large returns, but failed to register the ICO with the SEC.

PeterisP3• 7 years ago

The main issue with SEC is that everything that claims or "wink wink nudge nudge" implies that you should buy The Thing from them because it's going to jump in value is essentially an investment proposal that's potentially fraudulent and thus needs to meet SEC regulations.

Stablecoins, where you explicitly state that it's never ever going to appreciate and make you richer by just holding it, don't meet that criteria so SEC doesn't (and isn't allowed to) regulate them.

IRS/tax issues, and AML/KYC (anti money laundering/know your customer) laws still are a potential issue, but that's not handled by SEC.

spiznnx• 7 years ago

Exactly. A blockchain that is fully controlled by one entity is just a database.

TazeTSchnitzel3• 7 years ago

It's PayPal or Venmo or whatever existing money transfer service you like, but with Facebook Dollars.

haunter• 7 years ago

So it's basically just a virtual currency a la Twitch Bits, Riot Points, old Xbox Points etc. but running on blockchain

tastygreenapple• 7 years ago

How do you think the community standards and cryptocurrency are going to interact? If Facebook deplatforms you, do they take your zuccbucks?

apo• 7 years ago

At some point the "blockchain not Bitcoin" crowd will wake up to the fact that Bitcoin's value proposition is censorship resistance. Nobody can block you from making a payment. The idea is still revolutionary, as evidenced by the large number of people for whom Bitcoin still doesn't look like anything (other than maybe something scary or bad).

Whatever Facebook comes up with will be the antithesis of censorship resistant. There is no point to buy or use it because it solves no problems for regular people.

Which brings us to why Facebook is bothering. For the simple reason that governments print currencies. Control (through censorship) and self enrichment ( through inflation).

This only works by compelling people to use the currency. My prediction is that Phase 2 of this ridiculous plan is to force people on Facebook to use the token while gradually cutting third party payment processors out.

pryelluw• 7 years ago

" There is no point to buy or use it because it solves no problems for regular people."

I disagree with that statement. It does solve the problem of getting paid through facebook (which a lot of people do and use). It surely promotes and carves Facebook deeper into their lives, but it solves a problem.

Im not for this offering, but its not hard for me to see why it has a chance of mass aadoption. Hopefully it fails.

mountainofdeath• 7 years ago

So it's a cryptocurrency that's basically the equivalent of a gift card or Chuck-E-Cheese token? How is this different from in-game currency that isn't backed by Crypto?

Seems that FB is just riding the buzzword wave.

anonymous51334• 7 years ago

Yes but it can still be useful. Facebook is basically planning to compete directly with amazon in ecommerce space. In the future, you won't even have to leave facebook to buy something. The merchant will be able to process orders directly through facebook.

Also my guess is informal trading markets will form using this facebook currency. If everyone is using the same form of payment then cross boarder trade becomes much easier. No more foreign exchange hassles. I've already seen it happen with stuff like amazon gift cards but recently amazon removed the ability to check the balance of amazon gift cards. I have already moved away from accepting amazon gift cards for this very reason. If facebook's coin is widely used and can be used to buy a lot of different stuff then I would definitely shift my informal trading to the facebook coin.

redm• 7 years ago

Oh hell, I was excited until I read this "Team: Facebook’s blockchain project is overseen by former PayPal President and VP of Facebook Messenger David Marcus." I just can't see leadership being good for Crypto if his tenure at Paypal is any indicator.

argo_• 7 years ago

Just another fancy token... not a real currency. The only global digital currency that has a future is bitcoin.

nikolay2• 7 years ago

Are you serious?! Bitcoin is the most unfit one. It's like saying VHS has a future, when everybody's happier with Bluray.

telaelit• 7 years ago

I remember reading about company money in history books. Looks like we’re going back in time.

booleandilemma• 7 years ago

“Facebook plans gift card system”

m3kw9• 7 years ago

Not sure how they can solve the 51% attack in the beginning when you have massive asic farms ready to roll in an instance

np_tedious• 7 years ago

You have to pay $10 million, and presumably enter into some contracts / business arrangements, to run a full node

spookybones• 7 years ago

Will there be any financial advantage to owning Libra coins (or whatever they’ll be called) early?

throwaway1223782• 7 years ago

Facebook will be able to pair transaction data (consumer, product, cost, merchant) with their entire social graph. They can then offer licenses to run nodes with the ability to access all that data.

throwaway1223782• 7 years ago

This should be blocked by lawmakers if they are serious about their recent tech monopoly chatter

keiru• 7 years ago

So to summarize, the Facebook plan might look like this: (IANAL, so please correct me)

- Create a global currency that can only be used by FB users and through FB apps.

- Invest a billion in pegging the currency to make it stable and position it as the unchallenged WorldMoney™, but it will eventually carry its own weight in the long term.

- Collect direct purchase information like crazy, their ultimate wet dream (I know GDPR is not circumvented by the taxes thing, but it's as simple as asking "Can I track your purchases?" and people will simply say yes.)

- Implement this scheme as a blockchain to dodge antitrust laws (or whatever applies when you become a worldwide financial entity) by distributing the operation/management/governance among interested parties.

- Even receive some millions from said companies to hold that power in the first place.

- Still hold the real power over the implementation at the end of the day, but not the accountability.

- Dodge taxes like crazy wherever you can, charge fees whenever you want, etc.

- Make users comply to whatever conditions you want because at some point it will become mandatory to have a FB account.

Am I missing something?

EDIT: - Pay their employees and finance their worldwide operation with monopoly money.

nikolay2• 7 years ago

The biggest nonsense I've ever heard.

Facebook plans cryptocurrency debut

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