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It’s becoming clear that cryptocurrency is a real threat to major incumbents, and the reason corporations have signed on to Libra is to placate their shareholde
by seibelj 7y ago
It’s becoming clear that cryptocurrency is a real threat to major incumbents, and the reason corporations have signed on to Libra is to placate their shareholders who are asking them for a blockchain play.
The benefits of digital assets are obviously better than old-school pen and paper assets. The same arguments against the internet are being applied to blockchain, and blockchain is going to win just as the internet won.
Fiat currency inflates and is subject to the whims of government. Cryptocurrencies are managed by code. I prefer the code, and I imagine citizens of countries like Venezuela and Turkey would also prefer code over their corrupt governments.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoHow is it clear? Ten years on there are zero cryptocurrencies in wide use as actual currencies, and blockchain has drastically changed zero industries (except maybe malware). The Internet had many popular use cases years or decades before investor money poured in. Blockchain has already seen a bubble and a bust with exactly one popular use case: trading cryptocurrency, which itself is only really used for speculation and scams. "Managed by code" is also not really a thing. Humans write the code! And there's no real reason to expect the humans who create the cryptocurrency ecosystem to be any more trustworthy than the humans in government.
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 7y agoAnd it’s not really managed by code anyway. Look at the DAO debacle: they started out saying the code is the law, and when someone found a bug in the code and exploited it, they changed the code by fiat. What is the point if you’re going to end up human arbitrators anyway?
- anonymous5133 7y agoCode can be verified and audited though.
- RHSeeger 7y ago> Fiat currency inflates and is subject to the whims of government. Cryptocurrencies have proven to be subject to the whims of the masses, shooting up in value (at least in part) because of speculation. At least fiat money backed by governments try to keep them stable (in general).
- anonymous5133 7y agoI've always wondered if it would be possible to create a true decentralized stable coin. Put some sort of mechanics in the code to do proof of stake rewards if the price starts skyrocketing (increase supply) and then maybe increase transaction fees slightly if price is plummeting (decrease demand). The staking nodes would need to have something to check price on non-manipulated exchange though which could be tricky but I find it an interesting idea to think about.
- anonymous5133 7y agoIMO, I think the only reason corporations have signed up is because they don't want to be left out if Libra goes big.