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Facebook Cryptocurrency Plan Faces Opposition in France

409 points by velcro 7y ago

orbifold 7y ago
There is basically no way that a self respecting first world country will allow this to happen. The national federal reserves in Europe are still responsible for international settlements, that gives a tremendous amount of power and oversight, they won’t allow a third party to take that away from them. Facebook may be able to buy off US regulators, but they won’t be able to convince the EU.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  Wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam isn't going to crack down even harder than the EU. Financial control is a big part of US power abroad and I can't imagine that the US government is going to tolerate a private entity taking that control away, and that's probably for the better. This entire Facebook currency thing sounds like something out of Shadowrun.
  - orbifold 7y ago
    I think it is likely that this is backed by a substantial set of US political interests. People that want to experiment with UBI might want to see a Facebook sanctioned UBI. This is basically any libertarians pipe dream. On the other hand I think you are right. I expect any US based opposition to move swiftly. Regulations should probably be the least of their concern given how the US has treated entire Nation States trying to move away from US dollar denominated Oil trade. It will be interesting to see what the equivalent of a no-flight zone, arming militants and sending “advisors” will be.
    - digitalengineer 7y ago
      You could ask Mr. Kim Dot Com...
    - jacobush 7y ago
      One can hope
    - elcomet 7y ago
      > This is basically any libertarians pipe dream. Are you sure about this? I thought libertarians were against all institutions such as the state with power over people. UBI is a socialist policy. It seems in total contradiction with libertarian principles to me. How is that possible?
      - orbifold 7y ago
        Well I am not a libertarian myself but as far as I understood people pushing for UBI are also pushing for a drastically smaller administration which is currently administering social benefits. This would be achieved by basically eliminating most other form of benefits, similar to how they propose to hand out vouchers for services like education instead of operating schools.
        feanaro 7y ago
        This is a drastic oversimplification. From my experience, libertarians are usually against UBI. There is certainly a large enough current that you can't make this generalization.
        x38iq84n 7y ago
        You have misunderstood libertarianism, just because it wants to see small to none state does not mean it would support UBI or other forms of socialism.
      - TimJRobinson 7y ago
        Libertarians believe in the government staying out of your business and letting free markets do their thing. With UBI everyone gets an automatic safety net and the ideal is that if all markets were free of government intervention people would buy what they want, and competition would down the costs of healthcare / education / food etc. So that those with UBI can have the basic necessities of life, without the government needing to do anything (other than dealing with tragedy of the commons type problems.)
      - antisemiotic 7y ago
        UBI is similar to negative income tax, which was proposed by (among others) Friedman.
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      "I owe my soul to the Facebook / Amazon store" I wonder if some of the big companies would like to bring back the company store system - with the rise of populist politicians and the rolling back of existing protections I am a little worried about this.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    >Wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam isn't going to crack down even harder than the EU... I wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam wasn't in on it in the first place. The potential military, economic, and intelligence value of this thing should be self evident.
  - xvector 7y ago
    Shadowrun is exactly what this reminded me of. We are careening towards that dystopia with zero brakes in sight.
- m3kw9 7y ago
  The US to get brought off to allow this is same as treason, it can fuk up the country
- neckeri 7y ago
  Thats assuming the EU isnt easy to buy off - looking at a couple of regulations in the pesticide industry its easy to see they're very accommodative. Lobbying is big business in Brussels.
  - ahartmetz 7y ago
    You can buy them off, but successful lobbying probably takes years of relationship building to make it look like marriage, not prostitution, to those corruptees that think of themselves as ethical people. You can't just arrive and buy some legislation.
    - stevesimmons 7y ago
      In October last year, Facebook hired Nick Clegg, former UK Deputy Prime Minister and well-known Europhile, as head of Global Affairs and Communications. So that's your years of relationship building, acquired in one go.
      - ionised 7y ago
        Nick Clegg isn't exactly well thought of. They goofed hiring him, which is great because the more Facebook fucks up the better the world becomes.
        ulfw 7y ago
        And let's be honest, being a British politician isn't super helpful in Post-Brexit EU either
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    The Farming Lobby is huge you mean
- deevolution 7y ago
  The great thing about bitcoin is theres no central actor for the state to target. Libra's biggest weakness is its connection to facebook.
  - twox2 7y ago
    If only that were true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockstream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockstream
Despegar 7y ago
Haven't read any of the news about how this currency is supposed to work, but if it lets anyone bypass the SWIFT system then the US should probably ban it too. Being able to sanction anyone is a powerful tool to give up to Facebook of all companies.
- tim333 7y ago
  It bypasses SWIFT but only in the way bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies do already.
  - dmitrygr 7y ago
    statistically, so few people use bitcoin, that one might as well round to zero, so governments do not need to care. FB has 2.5B users whom they can easily manipulate, hence governments care.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Yeah, but those who are sanctioned by governments have much more incentive to use Bitcoin, so the fact that most don't use it is not important, what is important is its existence as an option.
      - dmitrygr 7y ago
        It's not really an option. The hard (and VERY low) cap on transaction volume is a joke. If you think a Bitcoin is actually an option for actual banking for actual people (not just the current set of a few thousand gamblers), you are delusional. The current financial system DOES process more transactions in a millisecond than Bitcoin CAN in a week.
        cossatot 7y ago
        No need to call anyone delusional.
        xyzzyz 7y ago
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_bxg1 7y ago
Adding further support to my view that in today's world, (mainland) Europe is civilization's last hope.
- Bakary 7y ago
  What about Canada? As the ice thaws, it will be a perfect place to restart after the Collapse.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Yeah, fair
  - frenchy 7y ago
    I wouldn't be that hopeful. We have quite a number of wackos for the same reason that the US does (escaping religious "persecution" in Europe). Sorry. Edit: also, much of the thawing land is the Canadian Shield, which is pretty useless for farming.
- albertsondev 7y ago
  I dunno, the Nordic countries are seeming fabulous right now.
  - qwsxyh 7y ago
    I think most people still consider the Nordics mainland.
    - alkonaut 7y ago
      Yes we can indeed walk from the nordics to what we like to call "the continent". Which is odd when you think about it, because you'd think the continent would consist of what you can walk to.
    - ahje 7y ago
      Most people use the term "Continental Europe" and not "Mainland Europe" for that very reason. Technically, most of the Nordics is a peninsula and a large number of adjacent islands of various sizes, so it depends on your definition of course.
ilaksh 7y ago
They are going to get the regulators in their pocket and play ball with them. They will filter all transactions requested and provide a convenient place for governments to go for information or control. Its a way for companies to capitalize on the cryptocurrency hype, without, ultimately, acting like a real cryptocurrency. Its going to be a giant bank that has government law enforcement and intelligence agencies as its clients and patrons. This is sponsored by Visa and others. They are co-opting "cryptocurrency" for their own purposes. The goal is for this to become mainstream before real cryptocurrencies and take over before they can really get going for mainstream payments. I filed a bug report. https://github.com/libra/libra/issues/41 https://github.com/libra/libra/issues/41
- schoen 7y ago
  Your bug report is amusing, but isn't it unnecessarily personal? Couldn't you file a similar bug against the project that makes the point more concretely without the personal attack?
  - ilaksh 7y ago
    If he feels like I really attacked him.. I mean I can't do anything to someone who has that kind of control over the Dark Side of the Force. I'm not a Jedi or anything like that. I will probably make another issue that is just depressing and concrete about the project and features no characters but it will be easier for people to ignore.
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js4ever 7y ago
What France really want is to tax it (even before it exist)
- rdm_blackhole 7y ago
  I was going to say that. The main reason is tax. If you can't tax it, it's illegal.
- huis 7y ago
  Yes ofcourse they will. When a county doesn't receive tax it will be a very big problem. So countries need to be in control of the flow of money. It is also a very big problem is an outsider can change the value of your own currency. So you don't want US companies taking over your money flow.
  - koonsolo 7y ago
    It's my money, so also my flow of control, not that of the country I live in. I know this is open ups the whole discussion about cryptocurrenies all over again, but maybe some people don't want government to have the monopoly on storing and transferring 'money'.
    - seren 7y ago
      >It's my money, so also my flow of control, not that of the country I live in. It is a bit less binary that that. Money is only a bunch of papers or bits moving around. The fact that everyone "believe" in a money is that if you don't play nice with the bunch of paper or bits, like not paying your debt, "someone" will make you pay, seize your asset, throw you in prison, or sell you as a slave to your creditor depending on the jurisdiction. It does not mean that the state should be the only one to have the power to issue or create money, but without rule of law there is no money so to speak. So I believe that "power" and "money" are more closely related that we want to usually acknowledge it. What is interesting is that with its global reach, Facebook has probably already more power than a small state.
    - huis 7y ago
dash2 7y ago
"Faces opposition in France" is the new https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaDenies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaDenies/
lowdose 7y ago
Is Facebook establishing a new layer of network effects by implemention of this plan?
- wmf 7y ago
  That's clearly the goal, after seeing the massive success of WePay in China.
  - frakkingcylons 7y ago
    You mean WeChat.
  - marco_salvatori 7y ago
    People who are unfamiliar with WeChat Pay in China, are underestimating the potential for the FB cryptocurrency. The integration of social media and payments by WeChat strongly facilitated consumer adoption of their payment service. Everyone already had phones, everyone had WeChat installed on their phones. When payment services later became available through WeChat, there was a minuscule barrier for customer adoption. As people started using WeChat Pay they quickly found it more convenient for physical and online payments, money transfer between friends, and financial management. Next services like taxi hailing + payment became integrated into the WeChat app, increasing the convenience. The combination of convenience, preinstallation in the dominant social application, and low barrier to entry was a killer combination. In my estimation it turned out to be a stronger combination than Alipay, which started out as a payment service integrated with TaoBao (comparable to the Ebay / Paypal). Since Facebook has a dominant social app and messaging app position worldwide, their payments service will have worldwide penetration from day one. Since Facebook can do software, the service interface will be more convenient and user friendly that existing services in the first world, and infinitely more so elsewhere. Money can be made here and evidence suggests people want to adopt when there is a no effort road to adoption. There are vested interests to deal with and satisfy on the road to market penetration, existing market players and governments, but American entrepreneurs like Gates and Jobs were able to overcome vested interests in their time and I suspect Mark is equally resourceful when he wants to be.
atarian 7y ago
Facebook is going to great lengths to stress how little they own, but I think the point is moot; even this article is calling it a Facebook token.
stlava 7y ago
That didn't take long...
negamax 7y ago
When I first heard about FB's crypto plans, I got excited and concluded that it will be a success because of FB's user base. Now that I know better. Libra is set for failure. People will reject it indeed
tareqak 7y ago
Not just France: https://apnews.com/d9f3a3ef897e4db2a637b6c5e59a3d54 https://apnews.com/d9f3a3ef897e4db2a637b6c5e59a3d54 (Lawmaker wants Facebook to suspend currency plan).
m3kw9 7y ago
It just seems to be FB is trying to pull a fast one and it already knows everyone saw it coming before it even moved.
- m3kw9 7y ago
  I mean, they dressed up a pig, put lipstick on it
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ei8htyfi5e 7y ago
I put this in another thread but I've been shouting it far and wide today. I've lived in China and seen how this plays out. Facebook's new Libra Blockchain will be a centralized bank but way more dangerous. It will allow for a worldwide social credit system. If Facebook decides to remove you for wrong speak or wrong think, your money and many services will be inaccessible. Further, they have no mandate like the central bank does to increase employment. Their mandate is to make money for corporations. This will lead to global social unrest. This will put some third-world countries in complete control by Facebook. I mean, whoever runs the currency, is the country. But in this case, it will be completely controlled, as it's also many of those countries main source of communication. Therefore, if Facebook's Libra is a countries main currency and social network, that country will be owned by Facebook. Finally, the regulations on crypto and blockchain are still new. This is in Facebook's advantage as they can start lobbying to have these laws in their favor. They can argue for less transparency, as they are a bank, and this fits with their new privacy marketing message. This is extremely subversive and Europe is already rightly pushing back. America will be next. On one hand, I love seeing the existing financial system panic when new technology comes out. On the other hand, under no circumstances will I accept a world where Facebook started the one world currency.
- ei8htyfi5e 7y ago
  Also, to be up front, some of these points I found on a thread early this morning and I copied it to a note pad for later, then went to sleep. When I woke up, the page had refreshed and I have no way of crediting the original author. But I think it's important to share, so I did. If you are the author, or know who wrote parts of this, please tell me and I will credit you/them.
  - nabakin 7y ago
    Cant you google some of the text to find the original comment? Or are you saying the original comment was deleted?
    - ei8htyfi5e 7y ago
cwperkins 7y ago
Its quite telling that the promo video only shows people from countries with a substantial unbanked population. I do think that getting these people banked is safer and more secure for them (mitigates risk of being robbed) and enables a more vibrant economy (more lending because of deposits), but why should Facebook be the entity behind this? I am a cautiously optimistic person, but this is giving me the jeepers. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it doesn't feel right.
- omeid2 7y ago
  > mitigates risk of being robbed This is very unlikely, in places with social unrest people get forced to go to bank withdraw cash, or even as far as sale goods to make the cash for gangster, making it digital will make zero difference. > more lending because of deposits Lending by who? what deposits? lending most of all depends on risk which requires a stable society and some resemblance of an economic system and policy.
colechristensen 7y ago
>
- hartator 7y ago
  SEC has no authority over France.
chris_wot 7y ago
I cannot understand why you would want to use Facebook's "currency". I'd just use what we currently have.
- john_minsk 7y ago
  Biggest bank in Russia (Sberbank) introduced a simple feature: if you know a phone number of a person, you can enter it on their website and if the owner of the phone number has any account with Sberbank you can send him money. The convenience of such feature was so big that it caused people move from other banks to Sberbank just to use it. Eventually leading to government regulation making this feature bank-agnostic. The point here is: people who are used to Internet and the way things work here can't understand the old-fashioned companies. Why sending money overseas cost such enormous amounts of money? Why bank fees are so difficult to understand? Why there is fee when moving money within the same bank, when we all know that it is simple transaction in the database?
  - skribbj 7y ago
    Same thing in Scandinavia, but it's a cooperation between banks. Know someones phone number? Open the app "Swish" and send him money.
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Why what is the use case here that bank transfers, cheques and cash don't already solve
      - skribbj 7y ago
        Say you're out eating with mates and you want to split the bill, no one really carries cash anymore here so that's not an option (and also annoying to split). Writing a cheque is obviously ridiculous and a bank transfer requires a lot of needless information. A "swish" as we call it takes about 10 seconds, 5 if your friend is already in your phone's contacts. It's just an ease of access / quality of life thing. Your question is more or less equivalent to: "What's the purpose of QR-codes? Just enter the URL!" - it's easy, fast, and frankly nice. A really really simple and great way to send small amounts of money between people.
gexla 7y ago
> When people are asked why they remain on the fringe of the existing financial system, those who remain “unbanked” point to not having sufficient funds, high and unpredictable fees, banks being too far away, and lacking the necessary documentation. Unfortunately the reality of being "unbanked" is that government regulations will still put up a barrier. KYC laws require "necessary documentation" which these big providers won't be able to get past. Local options may still be better in these cases. For example, people who were born stateless may not be able to easily acquire KYC documentation. They may not have documentation of being born. Being locked out of ID options puts a limitation on getting past KYC. In the Philippines, there are mobile options where you can deal with small amounts of money without having to verify your identity. These options are run by the major telco's here.
kumarvvr 7y ago
Facebook has already wreaked havoc with it's power, it has shown how deceptive it is, it has resisted regulation, it's chief executives have refused to testify to governments. Now them having a cryptocurrency is alarming. Why does it really need to do this? There is nothing anonymous about facebook. Whatever transaction is done, will be linked to your account. This is dangerous. Whether they start or not is irrelevant, as informed users, we must spread word in our circle to avoid such cryptocurrency like the plague. It will no longer be sufficient to try to prevent FB from going ahead with this plan, because they will, if not now, after a few months or years from now. The only thing that will prevent this from wreaking havoc in the world is to spread awareness of how bad this is and how much more power it will give to FB.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  > Now them having a cryptocurrency is alarming I am genuinely surprised people would allow a company collecting data to be their financial provider. This is mostly contrary to the idea behind bitcoin to have a decentralized currency beyond anyone's control. The unholy alliance between facebook, ebay, visa and mastercard is certainly no advantage to the user. But I am afraid convenience will bite us in the ass again.
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  Sure, it's cancer compared to other cryptocurrencies, but what can possibly go wrong if it competes with fiat? People in the article started to speak about better money transfer technology. Why only now? Because they stagnated as a monopoly.
- temptiayruro 7y ago
  When I think 1984, I think Facebook more than anything else. It has users all over the globe with 2 billion users. That’s more users than the most populous country in the world. If they succeed, there will be no privacy left. Evil will have won.
tasssko 7y ago
This is all a game. Bitcoin and other coins are currently available for use by anyone. Their value is decided on network effects or supply/ demand. It's not regulated and can facilitate global transactions (I.e if you have patience and time). For some people it's working well. What we will probably discover is as long as Bitcoin is difficult to use and targets people with niche requirements the government will look the other away. As soon as someone wants to make this easier well things change. Libra was a very convincing sell to me. The challenge with bitcoin is the volatility potential. Libra might convince more people to think of Bitcoin more.
- cynicalreason 7y ago
  Bitcoin value was influenced a lot by speculation thus it's volatility. If it had more widespread use it would lessen it's volatile nature
tootahe45 7y ago
>Parity with this basket of currencies will be reached via a redemption mechanism similar to other stablecoins such as Tether So.. no reliable way to actually get your monopoly money into USD? at least they don't falsely claim to have the USD sitting in a bank, that's a start i guess.
- jmalkin 7y ago
  An article I read claimed exactly that, saying that the real money sitting in a bank would also be used for generating interest to pay back initial investors Can't find the source but it was reliable, Techcrunch or the New York Times I think
  - cynicalreason 7y ago
    They literally say so in their white paper. It's 'assets' not USD specifically
Entwickler 7y ago
I would say it's meeting some opposition in the USA as well, starting with the chair of the House Financial Services Committee. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/rep-maxine-waters-facebook-should-stop-work-on-libra-cryptocurrency.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/rep-maxine-waters-facebook-s...
aurelienb 7y ago
The future is already there. It's just not evenly distributed. So Shadowrun/Cyberpunk 2020-2077. They only lack of the extra-territoriality for their offices :)
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409 points by velcro 7y ago

There is basically no way that a self respecting first world country will allow this to happen. The national federal reserves in Europe are still responsible for international settlements, that gives a tremendous amount of power and oversight, they won’t allow a third party to take that away from them. Facebook may be able to buy off US regulators, but they won’t be able to convince the EU.

Barrin92 7y ago
Wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam isn't going to crack down even harder than the EU. Financial control is a big part of US power abroad and I can't imagine that the US government is going to tolerate a private entity taking that control away, and that's probably for the better. This entire Facebook currency thing sounds like something out of Shadowrun.
- orbifold 7y ago
  I think it is likely that this is backed by a substantial set of US political interests. People that want to experiment with UBI might want to see a Facebook sanctioned UBI. This is basically any libertarians pipe dream. On the other hand I think you are right. I expect any US based opposition to move swiftly. Regulations should probably be the least of their concern given how the US has treated entire Nation States trying to move away from US dollar denominated Oil trade. It will be interesting to see what the equivalent of a no-flight zone, arming militants and sending “advisors” will be.
  - digitalengineer 7y ago
    You could ask Mr. Kim Dot Com...
  - jacobush 7y ago
    One can hope
  - elcomet 7y ago
    > This is basically any libertarians pipe dream. Are you sure about this? I thought libertarians were against all institutions such as the state with power over people. UBI is a socialist policy. It seems in total contradiction with libertarian principles to me. How is that possible?
    - orbifold 7y ago
      Well I am not a libertarian myself but as far as I understood people pushing for UBI are also pushing for a drastically smaller administration which is currently administering social benefits. This would be achieved by basically eliminating most other form of benefits, similar to how they propose to hand out vouchers for services like education instead of operating schools.
      - feanaro 7y ago
        This is a drastic oversimplification. From my experience, libertarians are usually against UBI. There is certainly a large enough current that you can't make this generalization.
      - x38iq84n 7y ago
        You have misunderstood libertarianism, just because it wants to see small to none state does not mean it would support UBI or other forms of socialism.
    - TimJRobinson 7y ago
      Libertarians believe in the government staying out of your business and letting free markets do their thing. With UBI everyone gets an automatic safety net and the ideal is that if all markets were free of government intervention people would buy what they want, and competition would down the costs of healthcare / education / food etc. So that those with UBI can have the basic necessities of life, without the government needing to do anything (other than dealing with tragedy of the commons type problems.)
    - antisemiotic 7y ago
      UBI is similar to negative income tax, which was proposed by (among others) Friedman.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    "I owe my soul to the Facebook / Amazon store" I wonder if some of the big companies would like to bring back the company store system - with the rise of populist politicians and the rolling back of existing protections I am a little worried about this.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >Wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam isn't going to crack down even harder than the EU... I wouldn't be so sure that Uncle Sam wasn't in on it in the first place. The potential military, economic, and intelligence value of this thing should be self evident.
- xvector 7y ago
  Shadowrun is exactly what this reminded me of. We are careening towards that dystopia with zero brakes in sight.
m3kw9 7y ago
The US to get brought off to allow this is same as treason, it can fuk up the country
neckeri 7y ago
Thats assuming the EU isnt easy to buy off - looking at a couple of regulations in the pesticide industry its easy to see they're very accommodative. Lobbying is big business in Brussels.
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  You can buy them off, but successful lobbying probably takes years of relationship building to make it look like marriage, not prostitution, to those corruptees that think of themselves as ethical people. You can't just arrive and buy some legislation.
  - stevesimmons 7y ago
    In October last year, Facebook hired Nick Clegg, former UK Deputy Prime Minister and well-known Europhile, as head of Global Affairs and Communications. So that's your years of relationship building, acquired in one go.
    - ionised 7y ago
      Nick Clegg isn't exactly well thought of. They goofed hiring him, which is great because the more Facebook fucks up the better the world becomes.
      - ulfw 7y ago
        And let's be honest, being a British politician isn't super helpful in Post-Brexit EU either
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  The Farming Lobby is huge you mean
deevolution 7y ago
The great thing about bitcoin is theres no central actor for the state to target. Libra's biggest weakness is its connection to facebook.
- twox2 7y ago
  If only that were true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockstream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockstream

Despegar 7y ago

Haven't read any of the news about how this currency is supposed to work, but if it lets anyone bypass the SWIFT system then the US should probably ban it too. Being able to sanction anyone is a powerful tool to give up to Facebook of all companies.

tim333 7y ago
It bypasses SWIFT but only in the way bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies do already.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  statistically, so few people use bitcoin, that one might as well round to zero, so governments do not need to care. FB has 2.5B users whom they can easily manipulate, hence governments care.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    Yeah, but those who are sanctioned by governments have much more incentive to use Bitcoin, so the fact that most don't use it is not important, what is important is its existence as an option.
    - dmitrygr 7y ago
      It's not really an option. The hard (and VERY low) cap on transaction volume is a joke. If you think a Bitcoin is actually an option for actual banking for actual people (not just the current set of a few thousand gamblers), you are delusional. The current financial system DOES process more transactions in a millisecond than Bitcoin CAN in a week.
      - cossatot 7y ago
        No need to call anyone delusional.
      - xyzzyz 7y ago

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_bxg1 7y ago

Adding further support to my view that in today's world, (mainland) Europe is civilization's last hope.

Bakary 7y ago
What about Canada? As the ice thaws, it will be a perfect place to restart after the Collapse.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Yeah, fair
- frenchy 7y ago
  I wouldn't be that hopeful. We have quite a number of wackos for the same reason that the US does (escaping religious "persecution" in Europe). Sorry. Edit: also, much of the thawing land is the Canadian Shield, which is pretty useless for farming.
albertsondev 7y ago
I dunno, the Nordic countries are seeming fabulous right now.
- qwsxyh 7y ago
  I think most people still consider the Nordics mainland.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    Yes we can indeed walk from the nordics to what we like to call "the continent". Which is odd when you think about it, because you'd think the continent would consist of what you can walk to.
  - ahje 7y ago
    Most people use the term "Continental Europe" and not "Mainland Europe" for that very reason. Technically, most of the Nordics is a peninsula and a large number of adjacent islands of various sizes, so it depends on your definition of course.

ilaksh 7y ago

They are going to get the regulators in their pocket and play ball with them. They will filter all transactions requested and provide a convenient place for governments to go for information or control. Its a way for companies to capitalize on the cryptocurrency hype, without, ultimately, acting like a real cryptocurrency. Its going to be a giant bank that has government law enforcement and intelligence agencies as its clients and patrons. This is sponsored by Visa and others. They are co-opting "cryptocurrency" for their own purposes. The goal is for this to become mainstream before real cryptocurrencies and take over before they can really get going for mainstream payments. I filed a bug report. https://github.com/libra/libra/issues/41 https://github.com/libra/libra/issues/41

schoen 7y ago
Your bug report is amusing, but isn't it unnecessarily personal? Couldn't you file a similar bug against the project that makes the point more concretely without the personal attack?
- ilaksh 7y ago
  If he feels like I really attacked him.. I mean I can't do anything to someone who has that kind of control over the Dark Side of the Force. I'm not a Jedi or anything like that. I will probably make another issue that is just depressing and concrete about the project and features no characters but it will be easier for people to ignore.

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js4ever 7y ago

What France really want is to tax it (even before it exist)

rdm_blackhole 7y ago
I was going to say that. The main reason is tax. If you can't tax it, it's illegal.
huis 7y ago
Yes ofcourse they will. When a county doesn't receive tax it will be a very big problem. So countries need to be in control of the flow of money. It is also a very big problem is an outsider can change the value of your own currency. So you don't want US companies taking over your money flow.
- koonsolo 7y ago
  It's my money, so also my flow of control, not that of the country I live in. I know this is open ups the whole discussion about cryptocurrenies all over again, but maybe some people don't want government to have the monopoly on storing and transferring 'money'.
  - seren 7y ago
    >It's my money, so also my flow of control, not that of the country I live in. It is a bit less binary that that. Money is only a bunch of papers or bits moving around. The fact that everyone "believe" in a money is that if you don't play nice with the bunch of paper or bits, like not paying your debt, "someone" will make you pay, seize your asset, throw you in prison, or sell you as a slave to your creditor depending on the jurisdiction. It does not mean that the state should be the only one to have the power to issue or create money, but without rule of law there is no money so to speak. So I believe that "power" and "money" are more closely related that we want to usually acknowledge it. What is interesting is that with its global reach, Facebook has probably already more power than a small state.
  - huis 7y ago

dash2 7y ago

"Faces opposition in France" is the new https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaDenies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RussiaDenies/

lowdose 7y ago

Is Facebook establishing a new layer of network effects by implemention of this plan?

wmf 7y ago
That's clearly the goal, after seeing the massive success of WePay in China.
- frakkingcylons 7y ago
  You mean WeChat.
- marco_salvatori 7y ago
  People who are unfamiliar with WeChat Pay in China, are underestimating the potential for the FB cryptocurrency. The integration of social media and payments by WeChat strongly facilitated consumer adoption of their payment service. Everyone already had phones, everyone had WeChat installed on their phones. When payment services later became available through WeChat, there was a minuscule barrier for customer adoption. As people started using WeChat Pay they quickly found it more convenient for physical and online payments, money transfer between friends, and financial management. Next services like taxi hailing + payment became integrated into the WeChat app, increasing the convenience. The combination of convenience, preinstallation in the dominant social application, and low barrier to entry was a killer combination. In my estimation it turned out to be a stronger combination than Alipay, which started out as a payment service integrated with TaoBao (comparable to the Ebay / Paypal). Since Facebook has a dominant social app and messaging app position worldwide, their payments service will have worldwide penetration from day one. Since Facebook can do software, the service interface will be more convenient and user friendly that existing services in the first world, and infinitely more so elsewhere. Money can be made here and evidence suggests people want to adopt when there is a no effort road to adoption. There are vested interests to deal with and satisfy on the road to market penetration, existing market players and governments, but American entrepreneurs like Gates and Jobs were able to overcome vested interests in their time and I suspect Mark is equally resourceful when he wants to be.

atarian 7y ago

Facebook is going to great lengths to stress how little they own, but I think the point is moot; even this article is calling it a Facebook token.

stlava 7y ago

That didn't take long...

negamax 7y ago

When I first heard about FB's crypto plans, I got excited and concluded that it will be a success because of FB's user base. Now that I know better. Libra is set for failure. People will reject it indeed

tareqak 7y ago

Not just France: https://apnews.com/d9f3a3ef897e4db2a637b6c5e59a3d54 https://apnews.com/d9f3a3ef897e4db2a637b6c5e59a3d54 (Lawmaker wants Facebook to suspend currency plan).

m3kw9 7y ago

It just seems to be FB is trying to pull a fast one and it already knows everyone saw it coming before it even moved.

m3kw9 7y ago
I mean, they dressed up a pig, put lipstick on it

deleted 7y ago

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ei8htyfi5e 7y ago

I put this in another thread but I've been shouting it far and wide today. I've lived in China and seen how this plays out. Facebook's new Libra Blockchain will be a centralized bank but way more dangerous. It will allow for a worldwide social credit system. If Facebook decides to remove you for wrong speak or wrong think, your money and many services will be inaccessible. Further, they have no mandate like the central bank does to increase employment. Their mandate is to make money for corporations. This will lead to global social unrest. This will put some third-world countries in complete control by Facebook. I mean, whoever runs the currency, is the country. But in this case, it will be completely controlled, as it's also many of those countries main source of communication. Therefore, if Facebook's Libra is a countries main currency and social network, that country will be owned by Facebook. Finally, the regulations on crypto and blockchain are still new. This is in Facebook's advantage as they can start lobbying to have these laws in their favor. They can argue for less transparency, as they are a bank, and this fits with their new privacy marketing message. This is extremely subversive and Europe is already rightly pushing back. America will be next. On one hand, I love seeing the existing financial system panic when new technology comes out. On the other hand, under no circumstances will I accept a world where Facebook started the one world currency.

ei8htyfi5e 7y ago
Also, to be up front, some of these points I found on a thread early this morning and I copied it to a note pad for later, then went to sleep. When I woke up, the page had refreshed and I have no way of crediting the original author. But I think it's important to share, so I did. If you are the author, or know who wrote parts of this, please tell me and I will credit you/them.
- nabakin 7y ago
  Cant you google some of the text to find the original comment? Or are you saying the original comment was deleted?
  - ei8htyfi5e 7y ago

cwperkins 7y ago

Its quite telling that the promo video only shows people from countries with a substantial unbanked population. I do think that getting these people banked is safer and more secure for them (mitigates risk of being robbed) and enables a more vibrant economy (more lending because of deposits), but why should Facebook be the entity behind this? I am a cautiously optimistic person, but this is giving me the jeepers. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it doesn't feel right.

omeid2 7y ago
> mitigates risk of being robbed This is very unlikely, in places with social unrest people get forced to go to bank withdraw cash, or even as far as sale goods to make the cash for gangster, making it digital will make zero difference. > more lending because of deposits Lending by who? what deposits? lending most of all depends on risk which requires a stable society and some resemblance of an economic system and policy.

colechristensen 7y ago

hartator 7y ago
SEC has no authority over France.

chris_wot 7y ago

I cannot understand why you would want to use Facebook's "currency". I'd just use what we currently have.

john_minsk 7y ago
Biggest bank in Russia (Sberbank) introduced a simple feature: if you know a phone number of a person, you can enter it on their website and if the owner of the phone number has any account with Sberbank you can send him money. The convenience of such feature was so big that it caused people move from other banks to Sberbank just to use it. Eventually leading to government regulation making this feature bank-agnostic. The point here is: people who are used to Internet and the way things work here can't understand the old-fashioned companies. Why sending money overseas cost such enormous amounts of money? Why bank fees are so difficult to understand? Why there is fee when moving money within the same bank, when we all know that it is simple transaction in the database?
- skribbj 7y ago
  Same thing in Scandinavia, but it's a cooperation between banks. Know someones phone number? Open the app "Swish" and send him money.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Why what is the use case here that bank transfers, cheques and cash don't already solve
    - skribbj 7y ago
      Say you're out eating with mates and you want to split the bill, no one really carries cash anymore here so that's not an option (and also annoying to split). Writing a cheque is obviously ridiculous and a bank transfer requires a lot of needless information. A "swish" as we call it takes about 10 seconds, 5 if your friend is already in your phone's contacts. It's just an ease of access / quality of life thing. Your question is more or less equivalent to: "What's the purpose of QR-codes? Just enter the URL!" - it's easy, fast, and frankly nice. A really really simple and great way to send small amounts of money between people.

gexla 7y ago

> When people are asked why they remain on the fringe of the existing financial system, those who remain “unbanked” point to not having sufficient funds, high and unpredictable fees, banks being too far away, and lacking the necessary documentation. Unfortunately the reality of being "unbanked" is that government regulations will still put up a barrier. KYC laws require "necessary documentation" which these big providers won't be able to get past. Local options may still be better in these cases. For example, people who were born stateless may not be able to easily acquire KYC documentation. They may not have documentation of being born. Being locked out of ID options puts a limitation on getting past KYC. In the Philippines, there are mobile options where you can deal with small amounts of money without having to verify your identity. These options are run by the major telco's here.

kumarvvr 7y ago

Facebook has already wreaked havoc with it's power, it has shown how deceptive it is, it has resisted regulation, it's chief executives have refused to testify to governments. Now them having a cryptocurrency is alarming. Why does it really need to do this? There is nothing anonymous about facebook. Whatever transaction is done, will be linked to your account. This is dangerous. Whether they start or not is irrelevant, as informed users, we must spread word in our circle to avoid such cryptocurrency like the plague. It will no longer be sufficient to try to prevent FB from going ahead with this plan, because they will, if not now, after a few months or years from now. The only thing that will prevent this from wreaking havoc in the world is to spread awareness of how bad this is and how much more power it will give to FB.

raxxorrax 7y ago
> Now them having a cryptocurrency is alarming I am genuinely surprised people would allow a company collecting data to be their financial provider. This is mostly contrary to the idea behind bitcoin to have a decentralized currency beyond anyone's control. The unholy alliance between facebook, ebay, visa and mastercard is certainly no advantage to the user. But I am afraid convenience will bite us in the ass again.
GoblinSlayer 7y ago
Sure, it's cancer compared to other cryptocurrencies, but what can possibly go wrong if it competes with fiat? People in the article started to speak about better money transfer technology. Why only now? Because they stagnated as a monopoly.
temptiayruro 7y ago
When I think 1984, I think Facebook more than anything else. It has users all over the globe with 2 billion users. That’s more users than the most populous country in the world. If they succeed, there will be no privacy left. Evil will have won.

tasssko 7y ago

This is all a game. Bitcoin and other coins are currently available for use by anyone. Their value is decided on network effects or supply/ demand. It's not regulated and can facilitate global transactions (I.e if you have patience and time). For some people it's working well. What we will probably discover is as long as Bitcoin is difficult to use and targets people with niche requirements the government will look the other away. As soon as someone wants to make this easier well things change. Libra was a very convincing sell to me. The challenge with bitcoin is the volatility potential. Libra might convince more people to think of Bitcoin more.

cynicalreason 7y ago
Bitcoin value was influenced a lot by speculation thus it's volatility. If it had more widespread use it would lessen it's volatile nature

tootahe45 7y ago

>Parity with this basket of currencies will be reached via a redemption mechanism similar to other stablecoins such as Tether So.. no reliable way to actually get your monopoly money into USD? at least they don't falsely claim to have the USD sitting in a bank, that's a start i guess.

jmalkin 7y ago
An article I read claimed exactly that, saying that the real money sitting in a bank would also be used for generating interest to pay back initial investors Can't find the source but it was reliable, Techcrunch or the New York Times I think
- cynicalreason 7y ago
  They literally say so in their white paper. It's 'assets' not USD specifically

Entwickler 7y ago

I would say it's meeting some opposition in the USA as well, starting with the chair of the House Financial Services Committee. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/rep-maxine-waters-facebook-should-stop-work-on-libra-cryptocurrency.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/rep-maxine-waters-facebook-s...

aurelienb 7y ago

The future is already there. It's just not evenly distributed. So Shadowrun/Cyberpunk 2020-2077. They only lack of the extra-territoriality for their offices :)

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