3 ms·
"it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable
by muratgozel 7y ago
"it will be backed by a collection of low-volatility assets, such as bank deposits and short-term government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks." from the whitepaper: https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-reserve https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#the-libra-currency-and-...
It's like one to one copy of the traditional monetary system with speed of transactions improved. The volatility of low-volatile assets still contradictive in the long term (I mean just ~5 years) So I don't see any innovative approach in the terms of social order and decentralization.
- ymolodtsov 7y agoThey replace the incumbents in the industry by providing a faster and more consumer-friendly solution.
- Spivak 7y agoYour tone is too cynical, this is exactly what it is and what payment processors have been dreaming of for years. A banking system where money can be moved instantly without weird batching, holidays, manual intervention, and all the rest of the legacy crap that plagues current banking. I'm all for it!
- _bxg1 7y agoExcept that control will be "liberated" from governments and placed in the hands of an oligopoly of global corporations. Which is way worse.
- themacguffinman 7y agoHow will this liberate control from governments? Libra will still be pegged to government controlled currencies, libra is just a proxy for transportation. Governments can still regulate transactions that cross borders, the same laws will apply and will actually be easier to enforce because the libra network is managed by legal corporations rather than an anonymous pool of users.
- _bxg1 7y ago> Libra will still be pegged to government controlled currencies For the time being. That's just part of the bootstrapping process, to avoid volatility in the short-term. > Governments can still regulate transactions that cross borders And how do you suggest they'll do that?
- themacguffinman 7y ago> That's just part of the bootstrapping process, to avoid volatility in the short-term. How would you stop pegging libra to a currency without destroying or distorting enormous values of libra that existing owners have and therefore permanently destroying trust in libra? I don't see any real substance to this sort of vague cynical claim that "they're just biding their time". > And how do you suggest they'll do that? By applying the same transaction reporting laws to libra (which have equivalent currency value) that already apply to bank-to-bank transactions. The key validators in libra transactions are legal corporations unambiguously within government jurisdiction.
- muratgozel 7y agoI also can use it for buying a coffee or sending payments across border directly and I appreciate already the developers and managers behind it but people die and suffer for the sake of "low volatile assets" for years. Speed or functionality may be problematic previously but we have much deeper and important problems which can only be solved by contributions of companies like Facebook. That's why I'm uttering this here.
- tryptophan 7y agoAgree. Except for privacy concerns, I don't really see any other downsides. Libra just seems to be a transport/UX layer for dollars/other currencies. I won't use it for privacy reasons, but I'm curious to see how it will work out in practice.
- scottrogowski 7y agoSo it sounds like Libra coins will be minted at a previously agreed-upon exchange rate by one of the consortium companies proving that they have bought one of these low-volatility financial assets. It does not sound like there will be any "mining" and the decentralization will be, for the time, in just a handful of large companies. Can someone validate that I'm understanding that correctly? If so, I'd agree with previous commenters that we're not looking at anything which can shift the power structure of monetary policy but improvements in transaction speed and cost could have some real social benefits - especially in the developing world.
- muratgozel 7y agoExactly. In short, we spend much less time to buy a coffee and much more others will suffer and die to keep that "real" assets "low-volatile".