6 ms·
I can grasp the idea that Facebook would want to capture more payments like WeChat does; what I can't figure is how having their own cryptocurrency would add an
by rdiddly 7y ago
I can grasp the idea that Facebook would want to capture more payments like WeChat does; what I can't figure is how having their own cryptocurrency would add anything. Whom does it appeal to? I doubt Facebook wants the drug dealer/money launderer market segment for example. (I also doubt it'll be secure or anonymous enough to satisfy those people.) And it's no good for speculators, if it's pegged. Seems like at best it's just a novelty or gimmick that maybe gets a few more people to try it out for giggles.
Using the term "innovation" might be a bit too generous here. Not that combining two things that already exist can't be innovative. When the boomers combined "white music" with "black music" they got rock and roll. But this is Facebook + crypto, two things that suck. (Apologies.)
- buboard 7y agoi doubt any drug dealer would use Libra directly. BUT, if it can be exchanged for Monero ...
- notahacker 7y agoNovelty or gimmicks are appealing when your payments business is only 2% of revenue and yet lots of people are discovering products and wasting money on pay-to-win-games through your platform. Their assumption is probably that Facebook gamers (and especially the "whales") are more likely to be the sort of people excited by breathless hype about cryptocurrency being the future without really understanding much about it, and less likely to be the sort of person that says "but you could do that with a centralised ledger".
- buboard 7y agoThey had facebook credits before and they curbed it, so i doubt the social gamers are their target market. But a payment system a-la apple and google pay could be a safeguard for them once their social media stop being so lucrative.
- thecupisblue 7y agoThey're using cryptocurrency because - off the top of my head in no particular order: 1. Hype 2. It gives "credibility" to their currency 3. they can be regulated as a crypto-currency that way. 4. It enables faster transactions and reactions to the transaction states than regular currency. 5. It locks the users in to their partners because it's more friction to get money. 6. Easier to obtain the data on how users spend their money. 7. Easier to introduce new models based upon transactions/currency. 8. It can be given away for free easily.
- driverdan 7y agoAll of those things except #1 can be accomplished with a standard virtual currency and a DB. There's no reason to use a blockchain.
- hackinthebochs 7y agoI'd much rather buy a virtual currency (pegged or not) than values in Facebook's database. A cryptocurrency gives you a certain baseline level of reliability over value and function that values in a centrally controlled database do not. It remains to be seen how much control Facebook will ultimately have over their cryptocurrency, so this point may be moot.
- tomc1985 7y agoSo... values in a decentralized database are worth more or something? You don't actually hold anything with cryptocurrency, it's all still line-items in a DB. E.g. the bitcoin you hold is only as good as the decentralized ledger says it is
- EthanHeilman 7y agoThere is a big difference between your money sitting in a single file under the control of a single party and your money sitting in three files under the control of three parties.
- pessimizer 7y ago> When the boomers combined "white music" with "black music" they got rock and roll. Irrelevant, but this is not a thing that happened. More accurately, when white people started playing black rock and roll, they also continued to develop rock and roll, alongside and in combination with black people (and other people.) Also, this is pre-boomer.
- rdiddly 7y agoWell yeah, obviously it didn't literally happen. I knew someone would object. When you play something you heard someone else play, it is going to sound partly like their work, and partly like you, unavoidably being you. That is what I meant; it was a shorthand meant to save us this tedious excursion. Chuck Berry tried to sound like Pat Boone. The Beatles tried to sound like Chuck Berry. And so on unto infinity. How about this: Two races whose artists had theretofore not collaborated much artistically due to an artificial separation (segregation), started to come into closer contact, in the context of the civil rights movement, new sound recording/reproduction technology, and a burgeoning youth population, and began to influence and imitate each other; and like a boulder rolling down from an unstable perch, managed to release a lot of energy. I know I know... no such thing happened!