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Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency Gets Big Backers
- ddtaylor 7y agoWill this be a centralized currency?
- godzillabrennus 7y agoIt’s Mark “I’m CEO B!t(h” Zuckerberg. Do you think he’d start a currency he wouldn’t be able to use to spy on every user?
- ddtaylor 7y agoI'm not really interested in the spying aspect of it, since most cryptocurrencies make all transaction information public in their blockchains. My interest is in who controls issuance of the currency itself and if that control is decentralized or controlled by a central entity, like Facebook.
- plotteddancer16 7y agoAny suspicions on how this will differ from the last decade of crypto coins?
- nelsonic 7y agoDeeper integration into the most popular social network meaning more people have exposure to it. In terms of functionality, it won't be any different.
- A2017U1 7y agoIt will far more likely be a database under the hood than a cryptocurrency.
- beenBoutIT 7y agoIf you keep the default settings and use it to buy anything it will spam your 'friends' just like Farmville. "Joe Wilson just used Libra to remove the ransomware from his Dell, how will you use it?".
- tomglynch 7y agoFunctionality may be different - we don't know yet. It hasn't been announced how decentralised it will be.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoIt will be marketed a lot better, it will be slightly more efficient and function more easily as money and it will also much more evil and bring a curse across the land, making horses lame and suchlike.
- askmike 7y agoIt won't be decentralized, it's more like Paypal than crypto coins.
- nelsonic 7y agoThis sounds like a great way for FB to know even more about you.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- clarkmoody 7y agoFacebook Inc. has signed up more than a dozen companies including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc. to back a new cryptocurrency it plans to unveil next week and launch next year. This means each of these companies will pay $$$ to run a "node" for this currency and have full visibility into the transactional behavior of the users of the coin. The term "cryptocurrency" is applied a bit too liberally in the space, but what are the odds that Facebook's coin is censorship-resistant? Will Facebook help enforce US monetary imperialism, or will it thumb its nose at US sanctions? (e.g. allow a US Facebook user to send Libra to Iranian Facebook users) Now, there could be a surprise plot twist in which these megacorps stand up for individual liberties. There have been stranger things.
- pfundstein 7y agoI'm interested to see the how existing crypto exchanges will handle this currency, if it can be traded on them at all. The market that develops in the cryptosphere around Libra will certainly liberate any attempted sanctions on the coin itself, unless Facebook can prevent free trading of the currency on exchanges.
- egypturnash 7y agoI would only put money on Facebook standing up for individual liberties if they were going to make money off of it.
- yamann 7y agoZucky is trying hard to make his scam of a company, that sells spam as the only source of revenue, looks legit and respectable company that actually sells something, but instead he adds up more scams
- camjohnson26 7y agoIf Facebook can pull this off they will have brought about the first universal internet currency, which would be a stunning achievement and could revolutionalize the web as we know it. Failed projects give us some idea of what their challenges will be. Cryptocurrencies right now have a trade off between scalability and decentralization. Bitcoin is theoretically decentralized even though the reality is more complex. But theoretically anyone with a computer can randomly decide to mine the coin and participate in the network. This whole process is made possible by Proof of Work, which was the key brilliant idea that made bitcoin secure and possible. The problem right now is this algorithm doesn’t allow very many transactions per second. Other currencies have experimented with something called Proof of Stake to solve the scaling problems but it’s not known if it can be as secure as proof of work. Facebook’s currency will probably use this method. The basic idea is that the holders of the currency vote for what happens on the network. It’s an interesting idea but it’s a very different direction than the key idea of bitcoin. Another issue is that governments rely on setting interest rates to manage their economies. If an internet currency starts to take off that will limit their ability to do this. At that point you can expect major pushback. And also, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is a huge target for hackers. Millions of dollars have been stolen over the last decade. Brilliant attacks have been created to exploit the tiniest flaws in code. The phone numbers of crypto enthusiasts have been hacked and their wallets drained. Hackers have even embedded malware on websites or servers to mine cryptocurrency on computers they don’t control. Facebook will need an iron clad security process if it wants to succeed.
- daveevad 7y agoWould you rather: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. or Mark
- ChainOfFools 7y agodepends on the Mark: Zuckerberg or Karpeles? on second thought, no it doesn't
- germanlee 7y agoAnd just to think, facebook banned all cryptocurrency ads last year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-announces-a-ban-on-cryptocurrency-advertisements/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-announces-a-ban-on-cry... Clever girl. Considering that facebook has an active userbase nearing 2.5 billion people, libra could be the most widely used transactional currency in the world if it lives up to its potential. One has to wonder how decentralized libra will be. I doubt facebook would introduce a currency without having direct control over it. After all, facebook and most social media companies are anti-dencentralization in their nature. And if they have control over the currency and obviously they have control over facebook accounts, then they could easily track users, currency and transaction. Considering Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc are now in the "social engineering", "political engineering" and societal manipulation game, maybe it's time for the lazy politicians to regulate tech. It's not simply a matter of privacy anymore, it's a matter of power and influence. And once again, it seems like HN's talk of facebook demise was a bit premature. But then again, HN is wrong about pretty much everything it seems.
- superkuh 7y agoIs it really a cryptocurrency when it's completely centralized? No. This is just Facebook-bucks. Store dollars. It's has absolutely none of the benefits of a real cryptocurrency.
- AlexCoventry 7y agoIs the ledger public and irrepudiable, at least? That'd be something,I guess.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- root_axis 7y agoIt's as good as any ICO; exercising control isn't good for businesses, but Buterin has shown he can make it happen if the stakes are big enough, just like Zuck will also be able to do.
- RexetBlell 7y agoThe fact that Ethereum Classic exists proves that Buterin has no control.
- root_axis 7y agoNo it doesn't. ETC is worth something like 2% of the value of ETH, it's a joke in comparison. Besides, the existence of "Ethereum Classic" is not something special, it's the inevitable side effect of suddenly having the balance of your ETH wallet "cloned" in a fork, you only have to lose if you don't treat both wallets like they're real.
- celticninja 7y agoThe existence of ETC says to me that ETH has the same problem, that is a bunch of power users can change the rules if they want to (if it is financially beneficial for them to do so). No different to a fiat currency controlled by the government.
- issa 7y agoI feel like this move will almost guarantee anti-trust actions. Although if nothing has already, who knows.
- whatpreventsit 7y agoWhat makes you think that?
- issa 7y agoJust that Facebook influencing public opinion, elections, and currency seems like it would be too much for the government to allow.
- turtlecloud 7y agoPrinting money has always been under the domain of the government. Wars have been fought over rights to print money.
- gear54rus 7y agoI mean... Are they kidding me with that name?
- giancarlostoro 7y agoMeans pound in Spanish. As if it holds any weight in the real world. Alt Timeline: Zuckerberg becomes POTUS in 2018. By 2020 he becomes POTKW and conquers all countries with just the information he knows about people on Facebook.
- nyolfen 7y agowhat do you think is weird or bad about it? it's a pretty appropriate name for a currency
- tmp2846 7y agoWhether this succeeds or fails it is very good for crypto.
- nsx147 7y agoThe real question here is if there will be a way to exchange this coin with Bitcoin or other crypto
- sidcool 7y agoFacebook has done horrible things, but bad business is not one of them. They already have 2 billion+ people on their platform(s) and if Facebook enables a virtual currency to exchange goods (real or virtual) it may be a hit. Just like mobile wallets have taken off pretty well, this could too. Again, I am not a facebook fan, but they know how to make money. This could be the next billion dollar idea.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- snitko 7y agoUgh. This will pass too. The value of Bitcoin is in the fact that nobody can control and censor it. It's black market money. If it didn't have this quality, it'd be useless. Nobody (meaning customers) cares about Facebook launching a coin. Facebook will not be the champion of freedom. How do I know? Ask yourself, if Facebook Coin is going to be available in Crimea (currently under sanctions) or Iran (currently under sanctions) or China (where facebook is banned). The answer is of course not. Bitcoin is available in all of those places and not a single government was able to do anything about it yet.
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoYou're forgetting how much credit card transaction suck. As I see it this is the main problem facebook could solve through sheer volume of use: microtransactions. Granted this is about the worst way this future could come about....
- asaph 7y agoIf Libra is a threat to credit cards, then why are Visa and MasterCard investing at least $10M each in it?
- civicsquid 7y agoIsn't this a lot like asking why Tyson invested in Beyond Meat when BYND is a threat to Tyson? Maybe you could call this defensively "investing in the future" of your industry (if this turns out to be anything at all).
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoSame reason Shell, BP and Exxon invest millions every year in renewable energy?
- stefanmichael 7y agoif your company were under threat and you had the option to invest in your competitor at an early stage, wouldn't you? I don't think I agree that this is a threat to credit cards, but even if I did I think I would understand the investment.
- xwdv 7y agoIMO this is it, the last best chance for a cryptocurrency to take off and actually be used as a currency and not a speculative vehicle. If Libra fails, even with all of Facebook’s resources at its disposal, then there is unlikely to be any viable cryptocurrency for at least another generation. Disclaimer: I hold a lot of stock in FB and no positions in other crypto.
- snitko 7y agoSpeculative vehicle? We're paying devs salaries in Bitcoin, what are you talking about?
- Barrin92 7y agoand many people are compensated in highly volatile stocks that are subject to speculation, you paying someone in bitcoin doesn't change anything about its speculative nature, it just means your employees are willing to receive compensation in a volatile currency.
- andkenneth 7y agoAnd they probably liquidate a good portion of it as soon as it hits their wallets.
- jeffwass 7y agoI’m curious. Is their salary paid as X BTC per month, regardless of the movement of BTC? Or are they paid the BTC equivalent of Y USD (or similar currency) per month?
- snitko 7y agoBtc equivalent of USD.
- lostmsu 7y agoAs mentioned in the top comment, FB currency is not a cryptocurrency in the sense "decentralized trustless public cryptography based ledger", so its adoption or lack thereof has little to no consequences on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- Mengkudulangsat 7y agoI'll be honest, I'm excited. The biggest hurdle to Bitcoin adoption are on-ramps / off-ramps. Businesses and individuals dealing with Bitcoin frequently get de-risked by banks and suppressed by regulators (e.g: China & India). Libra if (a) can be interacted with via API, (b) can itself be acquired via bank transfers / credit cards & (c) not geo-fenced, will eventually be adapted into one of the many exchanges and will contribute greatly to solving Bitcoin's on-ramping issues. Whether consumers want Bitcoin once they've tasted Libra, well that's an ideological choice. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
- snitko 7y agoWhy would anyone want a facebook coin that is completely controlled by Facebook which can be controlled by the government when with Bitcoin you get complete sovereignty?
- sametmax 7y agoNobody but it doesnt mattet. Facebook has the potential to br the western wechat with this.
- ahalam 7y agoMicropayments.
- snitko 7y agoLightning Network
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ramraj07 7y agoBecause not everyone cares about "complete sovereignty"? There's a reason why all these companies are still successful, most people don't care that much about their privacy or other dignities if it means convenience.
- rasengan 7y agoAll I care for is the end of the fiat system and the beginning of freedom for humanity.
- thedudeabides5 7y agoCan anyone explain how this will be different (from a user perspective) than any other tech enabled payments platform (Alipay, Paypal, Venmo etc)? What's the rationale?
- bandushrew 7y agoits run by facebook.
- datenhorst 7y agoThe white paper will be published next week, then we'll know more.
- SomeOldThrow 7y agoCan't read the article. What is it backed by? Where's this information coming from? I can't find any press release or sources that aren't publishers themselves—this smells like insubstantial technology and bought hype (not that it won't work...).
- ac29 7y agoIts backed by some large companies and a bunch of money: "The financial and e-commerce companies, venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will invest around $10 million each in a consortium that will govern the digital coin, called Libra, according to people familiar with the matter. The money would be used to fund the creation of the coin, which will be pegged to a basket of government-issued currencies to avoid the wild swings that have dogged other cryptocurrencies, they said."
- ForHackernews 7y agoI assume it's backed by faith in Mr. Zuckerberg's sterling reputation as a steward of the public trust.
- treelovinhippie 7y agoI've met a hell of a lot of authoritarians in the crypto scene over the past decade. Blockchain technology is a centralized datastore so of course it's a tool for global authoritarianism; think IBM in the 1930s selling slow databases to the Nazi's so they can keep a universal ledger of the Jews. P2P distributed architectures such as Holochain which actually decentralize data and control are far more positive paradigms for humanity.
- polotics 7y agoYou wrote: "Blockchain technology is a centralized datastore". care to explain?
- icebraining 7y agoI think they're talking about the blockchain working by a single global (hence, "central") consensus. It seems Holo avoids that somehow.
- askmike 7y agoThat's not what anyone in the space calls centralized. It's actually called "decentralized" by everyone because the way this consensus is kept and changed happens decentralized (to some degree). Right now it seems: If you don't have central consensus you can't have digital currency. Since everybody needs to be on the same line regards to who owns what. This is different from cash in the current world. Where nobody needs to agree to how much I have because I can physically store it and it's impossible to copy my dollars.
- icebraining 7y agoI agree that "global" would be a better word than "central", but that doesn't really affect treelovinhippie's point. > If you don't have central consensus you can't have digital currency. From what I can tell, the Holochain developers agree with this: you can't have a single global currency without global consensus. Their approach seems to be: rather than having a single global currency, have a network of IOUs, trusted and enforced locally: https://medium.com/holochain/beyond-blockchain-simple-scalable-cryptocurrencies-1eb7aebac6ae https://medium.com/holochain/beyond-blockchain-simple-scalab... Personally, I have no opinion on their approach, other than welcoming experiments, since that's what I find interesting in Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto space (and frankly wish it hadn't passed that stage yet).
- john_moscow 7y agoHas everyone already forgotten KODAKCoin [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin
- 1290cc 7y agoWhat I find hilarious is that Zuckerberg has probably been trolling the forums of bitcoin.org and reddit crypto groups for many months. And like any good crypto "expert", he spent his time sharing opinions and copying other peoples source code versus building anything real.
- wyxuan 7y agoVisa MasterCard and PayPal are just there to ensure that they don't get left behind if the FB coin succeeds, payments are their bread and butter, so if they can hop on the train they can be partially insulated. Otherwise they don't care.
- raquo 7y agoWhy does this centralized stablecoin need to be crypto? It's not like they need to raise funding for this. They could have made their own boring but extremely well positioned WePay / Paypal alternative ages ago, and instead they waited until cryptocurrencies are past peak hype to launch this. Puzzling. I guess the only thing they have to sell here is the privacy aspect of crypto, but I doubt you'll get effective privacy from Facebook on any Facebook platform, crypto or not.
- FAKEDETECTOR 7y agoIt has to be turned around to make sense: because FB already rapes user privacy to the max and knows everything about the foolish follower it is a perfect match to attach a payment system to that data pool! We can not let China lead the BigBrother revolution!
- colechristensen 7y agoYes. The biggest fans of Bitcoin have been all about the privacy and freedom of the coin but unless you have perpetually perfect opsec what actually happens is total information awareness. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing.
- opportune 7y agoMonero doesn't require as good opsec since it effectively does all the tumbling for you
- nroets 7y agoIt's a token i.e. a financial derivative. So Facebook is not giving it's users bank accounts. So there is less regulation e.g. Know Your Customer. A block chain will make it easier to build trust because (some) third parties can audit it.
- pxndxx 7y agoHow is this different from the "digital coins" e.g. gems in pay to win games then? They don't give me a bank account, but it's still digital money, but not a cryptocurrency.
- mirekrusin 7y agoIf it’s going to be anything close to what people call cryptocurrency - it’ll be deployed outside of fb 3 days later by somebody.
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/roYY9 http://archive.is/roYY9
- EGordon 7y agoThis is a case where the ability to downvote would be necessary. "Facebook" and "cryptocurrency" shouldn't be in the same sentence.
- reizorc 7y agoWhat's in it for Facebook?
- jbb123 7y agoI can imagine few things I'd be less likely to do than use a currency backed by facebook.
- bashwizard 7y agoThanks, I hate it.
- runeks 7y ago> It has been a decade since bitcoin was born, yet consumers hardly use it—or the hundreds of other cryptocurrencies—to pay for things. And why would they? Adding two extra steps to paying someone -- the buyer converting local currency to bitcoin, and then the seller converting bitcoin to local currency -- can never compete with just transferring local currency directly. Cryptocurrency was meant to be much more than just a payment system. Cryptocurrencies will not succeed until they close the loop: people receive their wages in cryptocurrency, which they use to pay for consumer goods in retail stores that accept only cryptocurrency (because their suppliers would pay their employees in cryptocurrency). This is where cryptocurrency would shine, ie. by creating a global credit market, since the unit of account could be the same for e.g. Turkey, Nicaragua and Vietnam. A global cryptocurrency-credit market could arise, in which savers finance e.g. consumer goods on the shelves of retail shops. This would incentivize savers to purchase cryptocurrency in order to earn a low-risk return on their money -- something which is not possible to do in most Western economies with short-term interest rates at zero or below. PS: If anyone is interested in creating the software infrastructure to make this happen, please let me know.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tikkabhuna 7y agoCouldn't my employer then see what I'm spending money on? If they know the address of the wallet they're putting money into, they know where that money then goes? Also, with a distributed ledger and billions of transactions a day, how is anyone supposed to actually index and understand all the transaction data? I like how Bitcoin I can actually sync all the data and (potentially) see stuff, but that was GBs of data and no where near as widely used. Cryptocurrencies have a place, but they are a solution to a small subset of problems while creating others. There's a reason why people still use cash over cards.
- colechristensen 7y agoYou probably can't have a stable global cryptocurrency without a central bank. Bitcoin fundamentally cannot work for credit because the risk to the lender is ridiculous. Macroeconomics doesn't work in diverse economies if you can't partition off areas of the globe and create friction at the borders for trade (with monetary policy). The same products and services need to have location based costs to ensure local economies can function. Now complete isolation is worse that perfect free trade, but there must be a balance. Lack of balance brings wealth concentration, poverty, starvation, and war.
- SalimoS 7y agoAs it's said in another comment, it's not cryptocurrency when it's centralized and by a singe entity i'm seeing it like all the in-game currency, controlled by the entity convert your local currency to this platform bucks to use it ONLY inside that platform
- beatle_sauce 7y ago> It isn’t known, even to some members of the consortium, how the coin will work or what their roles will be, people familiar with the project said. Such a stablecoin still requires a regulatory approval process before roll-out. Just as a reminder that there are open alternatives, GNU Taler would offer a more privacy-oriented stablecoin with an already clear specification, but has not yet been adopted by banks that require the regulatory approval. On the mailing list, the developer wrote that they work on the two missing features needed for approval (cross-device synchronization and an integrated backup solution).
- ptah 7y agoliterally printing money
- sgt101 7y agoIs this a brutal, final, swing at the Winklevoss twins?
- SI_Rob 7y agoHeh. You know their Bitcoin exchange is called ... wait for it... Gemini, right? They've wallpapered the DC Metro system with ads for it... calling it the first safe regulated Bitcoin exchange.
- randomsearch 7y agoMy speculative take: Facebook’s main product has likely peaked, in terms of users and advertising unit economics. The brand is tarnished, it’s not cool for younger people, its value proposition has been heavily eroded by short sighted decisions. Instagram is doing really well, but by its nature is no substitute for Facebook. It’s too specialised, too narrow a demographic, and doesn’t have the same appeal all round. It can’t pick up the slack from a declining Facebook. There are real regulatory dangers that Instagram etc will be separated off anyhows. This is a bet on something that could be big. I’d bet against it working out, but a series of bets like this are probably the best strategy to hedge against decline. We know payments dovetails well with messaging apps (hence perhaps the attempt to unify them, conveniently making it more difficult to break up the company). Payments is a no brainer, the “crypto” spin original but probably irrelevant. For Facebook it does have the advantage of enabling them to accumulate a large fund of “deposits” they can invest. If the above is right, we should see a few other big bets being placed soon.
- bpicolo 7y ago> It’s too specialised, too narrow a demographic Instagram has a billion users. What's narrow?
- romanovcode 7y agoI think even Instagram is slowly but steadily decaying. The amount of "influencers" are getting annoying even to younger people. I believe soon only people who will remain are influencers influencing influencers, you can even see this in the comments of said posts.
- noitsnot 7y agoRegardless, the company attempts to move forward with technology, acquisitions, and revenue. Facebook payments, gift cards in stores, stickers, etc. I don't think Insta is anywhere near full ad or revenue optimization.
- Pulletwee12549 7y agoYeaaaah, Facebook doesn’t give a shit about privacy and love to sell our data for $$. What makes them think we will trust them with our banking info? Lmao.
- Ahmed90 7y agoEveryone here is debating is it crypot or not... but does it matter? it's Facebook after all, we are (the typical techy user) not the target audience. Unfortunately, it's going to sell just because it's the big old facebook, your non-techy friend probably don't know the difference between crypto and food stamps all they know it's points for money, one is a boring piece of paper and the other is cool futuristic out of the matrix Bitcoin like super numbers
- julianlam 7y agoDidn't Facebook try something like this years and years ago in the form of Facebook credits, going so far as to even disallowing apps from having their own currency? I wonder how this is different, besides the whole "blockchain" bit, because otherwise it's just a rehashed idea with makeup on it.
- Ahmed90 7y agoThat was around 2010 iirc, before it was cool.
- thefounder 7y agoThis is good for the ecosystem. Next phase would be a crypto backed by government(s).
- glitchc 7y agoIf govts actually introduced crypto, it would be completely isolated from existing ecosystems. Unlike other players, govts. (western specifically) have a mandate to protect user privacy on their systems.
- thefounder 7y agoI believe some crypto currencies provide privacy(i.e monero) so a gov fork could work. Currently most of the governments share the data with various corporations(usually US based such as Visa and Mastercard, SWIFT, plus various national or foreign banks) and US gov agencies so the level of privacy is not that great. Crypto currencies could also provide transparency and open protocols so I believe a gov backed crypto would be successful in many areas(i.e public procurement)
- jormungand 7y agoand in the meantime real crypto projects like ICON is ignored by all.
- rattlesnakedave 7y agoFinally! A cryptocurrency with the ethics of Uber, the censorship resistance of Paypal, and the centralization of Visa, all tied together under the proven privacy of Facebook. Just what I’ve been waiting for.
- DonHopkins 7y agoAnd the magnanimousity of Oracle. And the carbon footprint of cow farts. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp-gps-0217-gates-on-cow-farts.cnn https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp-gps-0217-ga...
- runeks 7y ago> https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp-gps-0217-gates-on-cow-farts.cnn https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/02/16/exp-gps-0217-ga... > Bill Gates explains how no one knows how to stop bovine flatulence, a major contributor to climate change. I doubt we need to prevent cows from farting. As I understand it, all we need to do is stop killing naturally occurring methanotrophic[1] fungi[2] with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanotroph [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza
- matty22 7y agoOr have fewer cows in the first place by eating less meat.
- runeks 7y agoThe two approaches are completely separate. There's no reason to do just one or the other.
- DonHopkins 7y agoAnd we could reduce foul gas emissions by eating cryptocurrency shills.
- SI_Rob 7y agoAbout the name - Libra IIRC the Winklevoss twins have a Bitcoin exchange called Gemini Surely a coincidence brb going all in on tokenized cults
- DoreenMichele 7y agoIIRC the Winklevoss twins have a Bitcoin exchange called Gemini Gemini = "sign of the twins" (And, according to Wikipedia, is Latin for "twins" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(constellation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(constellation)) It's probably just narcissism in that case. I'm guessing "Libra" in this case is probably a variation of Libre -- free -- rather than an astrological reference. But that's totally a guess and could be completely wrong. If anyone actually knows why they named it Libra, I would love to hear the explanation. A quick search isn't turning up answers.
- SI_Rob 7y agoThe joke (maybe, maybe not) in drawing the presumably intentional astrological connection has to do with the fact that the Winks and Zuckerberg have some ... shared history.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoWell, I have no idea what you are talking about. Care to elaborate? I just find how things get named interesting. I did realize it was a joke, but that doesn't preclude actually discussing why these things got the names they have.
- SI_Rob 7y agoToo long and getting OT to explain here, but in The Social Network it was explored pretty... <dons shades > dramatically
- _pmf_ 7y agoDear god. I find China's approach of the social credit system less threatening.
- mountainofdeath 7y agoSo a cryptocurrency that is more currency than crypto? Again, back to the argument that the market is the same as in-game currency, store gift cards, Chuck-E-Cheese tokens, etc. Let's be honest, most of the hype around cryptocurrency is for speculation and not as a legitimate means of exchange. Normal money works fine for means-of-exchange barring a few exceptions e.g. capital flight, money laundering, generally escaping regulation so the only value left is hype.
- derefr 7y agoPeople are using the wrong term here. Stablecoins (what Facebook has made here) aren’t cryptocurrencies in-and-of themselves; they’re systems that expose regular fiat currency to smart contracts, so that you can pass e.g. “5USD” from one contract to another without it losing value; or so that exchanges don’t all have to have their own relationships with physical payment-processors and banks, instead just allowing you to “buy in” and “cash out” in stablecoin assets, which you can then take to some other service to trade for physical dollars. As such, stablecoins have entirely different requirements and properties than regular cryptocurrencies; for one, you usually want one big well-known entity backing them, because for the stablecoin to be stable, someone needs to back the coin with liquidity. “Liquidity” is something Facebook obviously has more of than most others, so they’re an obvious party to build a stablecoin. (Really, though, the best stablecoin for USD, would actually be run by the US government. There’s no reason for them not to do so, and no reason for people to reject them doing so. One could even interpret running a wrapped-USD stablecoin on any popular-in-the-US blockchain as being an obligation of the US Mint, given their mission. They’re currently failing to “print money” for these US markets!)
- opportune 7y agoOr more cynically, stablecoins are fiat wrappers that people hope will trick regulators into not applying financial regulations to them.
- DonHopkins 7y agoYou don't have to worry about the liquidity of Santorumcoin. Since it's water based, it will always flow smoothly, because Cathio will "provides the tools necessary to increase donations and connect with both local and global Catholic communities" to maintain a large frothy supply. https://gizmodo.com/rick-santorum-is-a-cryptocurrency-guy-now-apparently-1835434339 https://gizmodo.com/rick-santorum-is-a-cryptocurrency-guy-no...
- aphextim 7y agoIs there an official name for these tokens yet? Facebucks? Zuckbucks? Cuckbucks? Facecoins?
- lostmymind66 7y agoThe only reason Facebook is doing this is so they can track your purchases and mine even more of your data. This reminds me of what WeChat is doing in China, where most purchases are made and tracked by the government from this app. I don't even know if you can use cash there anymore. With the amount of information Zuckerberg has on the US population, he shouldn't ever be allowed to run for president while still running Facebook.
- xtracto 7y agoI remember a Blockchain related story here in HN some days ago where someone said that he did not believed in blockchain because there were no big-name Engineers working on it, specifically nobody from FAANG. There you go...
- tistoon 7y ago<< A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment. >> Every time I see this kind of news, I wonder, how do journalists get so much information when "an official spokesman declined to comment". Is this mainly just buzz so FB is in the headlines?