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After 10 years of the crypto-crazies of bitcoin denouncing the power of central banks, a private company announces to do a version of a crypto-currency and is u

After 10 years of the crypto-crazies of bitcoin denouncing the power of central banks, a private company announces to do a version of a crypto-currency and is under fire from a central bank. Clearly they got something right.

wil421 7y ago
If we knew which government, I mean person, created bitcoin would the same apply? Or would the Feds be all over Satoshi Nakamoto? FB has been the subject of several congressional and parliamentary hearings around the globe recently. Why would they not question Libra?
- nostrademons 7y ago
  There are several crypto projects (some even fairly popular) where we do know who's behind them - Ripple, Stellar, Ethereum, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Tron, EOS, etc. Hell, the core dev team members of Bitcoin itself is public knowledge. I think it's interesting that while crypto was a bunch of hobbyists and startups, it was just a bunch of folks wasting their money, but now that FB is involved it's a threat to the global monetary order. (Personally, I think the threat of FB is overblown - I'd bet that it'll make some significant noise over the next 2-3 years but fail over the next 10 - but the threat of startups and new crypto projects is underestimated. While the government is obsessed with FB's 2 billion users, someone else will come up with a cryptocurrency that's actually useful and take those 2 billion users for themselves.)
  - wil421 7y ago
    >someone else will come up with a cryptocurrency that's actually useful You named 8 different digital coins. Why aren’t any of them useful? Why do we need other ones?
    - nostrademons 7y ago
      It's like any other startup: building a product that's useful enough to get widespread adoption requires nailing a lot of different details. You leave one critical feature off and you don't get adoption. You get all of them right and the product takes off on a hypergrowth curve. It's like how Reddit took off once they added comments, or AirBnB took off once they started taking professional-quality photos. It's not that comments define Reddit (a Reddit with comments but no links or upvoting is a mailing list) or that photos define AirBnB (an AirBnB with photos but no booking, billing, or review systems is a travel blog), but that those were the last critical features needed for success. Speaking of the platform coins (Ethereum, EOS, Tron), I can think of few critical features they're missing. Scalability is one of them, which Ethereum is working on and EOS has - the network has to support more than 10 TPS. The ability to host a pretty, intuitive UI on the blockchain itself (so that you don't also need to run a website that listens to blockchain events for average users to run your DApp) is another. Discoverability is another, letting ordinary users find useful apps and spread them around.
      - anchpop 7y ago
        Do you view privacy as an important quality? Nano seems like a pretty good attempt at making a cryptocurrency that's useful as a currency, but transactions are not private and I'm not sure how big of a problem that is
        nostrademons 7y ago
        I don't personally, but there are cryptocurrencies that have made some really big strides there: Monero and ZCash. I've heard that a lot of dark-web business is actually switching over from Bitcoin to Monero, so it's getting some real adoption. One of the interesting things about the cryptocurrency space is that it's challenging one of our fundamental assumptions about economics, namely that currency is a winner-take-all market and everything works better if there's a single currency used for everything. Instead we're seeing that currencies can actually have different properties, and that this can actually affect which currency you'd chose to use in which circumstance. Want to do things that you don't want the government to know about? Use a privacy coin like ZCash or Monero. Want to let your computer programs transact economically? Use a platform coin like Ethereum, EOS, or Tron, and select which based on whether you want to write your smart contracts in Solidity, WebAssembly, or Java, respectively. Want to define a marketplace and create a utility coin to mediate transactions in it? That's what coins like BAT (Brave), Kin (Kik) and now Libra (Facebook) do. The primary functions of a currency (store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account) are also now getting unbundled: Bitcoin is used as a store of value, but not as a medium of exchange, while something like Monero or BAT is much more a medium of exchange than a store of value, and stablecoins like Tether or USDC are filling the unit-of-account role. That trend has been going on for decades - stocks and bonds are stores of value, but not mediums of exchanges or units of account, while in-game currencies are units of accounts but not a good store of value or unit of exchange - but the crypto space has made it explicitly clear.
    - buboard 7y ago
      We are not going to need any of them until we do. People just don't adopt them because wallets are still difficult to use, , they are a nightmare tax-wise and because most banks fear/hate them. But in a world beyond those obstacles, many of them will be useful for different reasons. Some will be safer as long term value stores , others will be fast enough for microtransactions. Considering that exchanging between them is trivial and instant, i think there will be many of them circulating in parallel
- buboard 7y ago
  Thats the beauty of decentralization. You can't really blame one person for bitcoin's value today, you have to blame everyone who participates in it (Really, who would the congress question, and what could that person do? take down bitcoin?). While Libra is centralized so single point of failure
  - damnyou 7y ago
    There are no decentralized cryptocurrencies. Like all other so-called "decentralized" coins, Bitcoin rewards economies of scale. That means that it tends towards centralization. Though of course Bitcoin has its own unique problems, like being deflationary (which is evil).
    - stale2002 7y ago
      What? Are you aware that all commodities are basically deflation? Do you think it is "evil" to buy commodities? This is all about freedom of choice. If you don't like the properties of certain products, then buy the one that you like. But lots of people would apparently prefer to spend their own money on deflationary assets. Who are you to say it is evil to do this with assets that one owns?
      - damnyou 7y ago
        Who are you to police me for saying that it's evil? You're welcome to your opinions, and I'm going to have mine. As you said, freedom of choice. Personally I think that modern fractional reserve banking and the Fed are great, and bitcoin maximalists are overall not very smart.
        stale2002 7y ago
        Nowhere did I "police" your opinion. You are the one who doesn't support people's ability to buy deflationary assets. Instead I was calling your opinion bad and in opposition to free choice. How is owning crypto any different than just owning a commodity, which can be deflationary? And why would owning a commodity be "evil"?
- conanbatt 7y ago
  I think what is happening to Libra right now is a good example of why Bitcoin is so censorship-resistant minded.
DiseasedBadger 7y ago
Nothing about Libra denounces the power of central banks. Facebook just becomes an unregulated central bank.
- buboard 7y ago
  if it did. it would clearly denounce their power. the US has waged many wars over the Dollar.
- dmix 7y ago
  I don’t know why people keep calling Libra unregulated as if some registered entity in Switzerland is going to protect them from gov scrutiny around the world. There’s no way they don’t face regulatory pressure as soon as they start operating, assuming it can even get to the size and scale where regulators even care about it.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  They can't be a central bank because they are not a government.
  - vageli 7y ago
    > They can't be a central bank because they are not a government. Isn't the federal reserve in the United States a private corporation that is not part of the government?
    - conanbatt 7y ago
      No, they are not a private entity in that sense. They president is appointed by the president. They are a (theoretically) independent organism.
asveikau 7y ago
Alternatively, a private entity which is typically described as under-regulated in its existing businesses thinks it can pivot into central banking without scrutiny.
- conanbatt 7y ago
  Having a currency is not the definition of a central bank. Central banks are public institutions with responsibilities within a government. Casinos that issue their own chips are not central banks.
andirk 7y ago
I worked for a mobile gaming company who did mainly casino games with fake chips that you could buy, and they're now under investigation for violating gambling laws because their chips _acted like real money_ therefore the same laws apply. Might be the same with crypto money where they'll be under the same laws as real money and trading.

wil421 7y ago

If we knew which government, I mean person, created bitcoin would the same apply? Or would the Feds be all over Satoshi Nakamoto? FB has been the subject of several congressional and parliamentary hearings around the globe recently. Why would they not question Libra?

nostrademons 7y ago
There are several crypto projects (some even fairly popular) where we do know who's behind them - Ripple, Stellar, Ethereum, Tether, Bitcoin Cash, Tron, EOS, etc. Hell, the core dev team members of Bitcoin itself is public knowledge. I think it's interesting that while crypto was a bunch of hobbyists and startups, it was just a bunch of folks wasting their money, but now that FB is involved it's a threat to the global monetary order. (Personally, I think the threat of FB is overblown - I'd bet that it'll make some significant noise over the next 2-3 years but fail over the next 10 - but the threat of startups and new crypto projects is underestimated. While the government is obsessed with FB's 2 billion users, someone else will come up with a cryptocurrency that's actually useful and take those 2 billion users for themselves.)
- wil421 7y ago
  >someone else will come up with a cryptocurrency that's actually useful You named 8 different digital coins. Why aren’t any of them useful? Why do we need other ones?
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    It's like any other startup: building a product that's useful enough to get widespread adoption requires nailing a lot of different details. You leave one critical feature off and you don't get adoption. You get all of them right and the product takes off on a hypergrowth curve. It's like how Reddit took off once they added comments, or AirBnB took off once they started taking professional-quality photos. It's not that comments define Reddit (a Reddit with comments but no links or upvoting is a mailing list) or that photos define AirBnB (an AirBnB with photos but no booking, billing, or review systems is a travel blog), but that those were the last critical features needed for success. Speaking of the platform coins (Ethereum, EOS, Tron), I can think of few critical features they're missing. Scalability is one of them, which Ethereum is working on and EOS has - the network has to support more than 10 TPS. The ability to host a pretty, intuitive UI on the blockchain itself (so that you don't also need to run a website that listens to blockchain events for average users to run your DApp) is another. Discoverability is another, letting ordinary users find useful apps and spread them around.
    - anchpop 7y ago
      Do you view privacy as an important quality? Nano seems like a pretty good attempt at making a cryptocurrency that's useful as a currency, but transactions are not private and I'm not sure how big of a problem that is
      - nostrademons 7y ago
        I don't personally, but there are cryptocurrencies that have made some really big strides there: Monero and ZCash. I've heard that a lot of dark-web business is actually switching over from Bitcoin to Monero, so it's getting some real adoption. One of the interesting things about the cryptocurrency space is that it's challenging one of our fundamental assumptions about economics, namely that currency is a winner-take-all market and everything works better if there's a single currency used for everything. Instead we're seeing that currencies can actually have different properties, and that this can actually affect which currency you'd chose to use in which circumstance. Want to do things that you don't want the government to know about? Use a privacy coin like ZCash or Monero. Want to let your computer programs transact economically? Use a platform coin like Ethereum, EOS, or Tron, and select which based on whether you want to write your smart contracts in Solidity, WebAssembly, or Java, respectively. Want to define a marketplace and create a utility coin to mediate transactions in it? That's what coins like BAT (Brave), Kin (Kik) and now Libra (Facebook) do. The primary functions of a currency (store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account) are also now getting unbundled: Bitcoin is used as a store of value, but not as a medium of exchange, while something like Monero or BAT is much more a medium of exchange than a store of value, and stablecoins like Tether or USDC are filling the unit-of-account role. That trend has been going on for decades - stocks and bonds are stores of value, but not mediums of exchanges or units of account, while in-game currencies are units of accounts but not a good store of value or unit of exchange - but the crypto space has made it explicitly clear.
  - buboard 7y ago
    We are not going to need any of them until we do. People just don't adopt them because wallets are still difficult to use, , they are a nightmare tax-wise and because most banks fear/hate them. But in a world beyond those obstacles, many of them will be useful for different reasons. Some will be safer as long term value stores , others will be fast enough for microtransactions. Considering that exchanging between them is trivial and instant, i think there will be many of them circulating in parallel
buboard 7y ago
Thats the beauty of decentralization. You can't really blame one person for bitcoin's value today, you have to blame everyone who participates in it (Really, who would the congress question, and what could that person do? take down bitcoin?). While Libra is centralized so single point of failure
- damnyou 7y ago
  There are no decentralized cryptocurrencies. Like all other so-called "decentralized" coins, Bitcoin rewards economies of scale. That means that it tends towards centralization. Though of course Bitcoin has its own unique problems, like being deflationary (which is evil).
  - stale2002 7y ago
    What? Are you aware that all commodities are basically deflation? Do you think it is "evil" to buy commodities? This is all about freedom of choice. If you don't like the properties of certain products, then buy the one that you like. But lots of people would apparently prefer to spend their own money on deflationary assets. Who are you to say it is evil to do this with assets that one owns?
    - damnyou 7y ago
      Who are you to police me for saying that it's evil? You're welcome to your opinions, and I'm going to have mine. As you said, freedom of choice. Personally I think that modern fractional reserve banking and the Fed are great, and bitcoin maximalists are overall not very smart.
      - stale2002 7y ago
        Nowhere did I "police" your opinion. You are the one who doesn't support people's ability to buy deflationary assets. Instead I was calling your opinion bad and in opposition to free choice. How is owning crypto any different than just owning a commodity, which can be deflationary? And why would owning a commodity be "evil"?
conanbatt 7y ago
I think what is happening to Libra right now is a good example of why Bitcoin is so censorship-resistant minded.

DiseasedBadger 7y ago

Nothing about Libra denounces the power of central banks. Facebook just becomes an unregulated central bank.

buboard 7y ago
if it did. it would clearly denounce their power. the US has waged many wars over the Dollar.
dmix 7y ago
I don’t know why people keep calling Libra unregulated as if some registered entity in Switzerland is going to protect them from gov scrutiny around the world. There’s no way they don’t face regulatory pressure as soon as they start operating, assuming it can even get to the size and scale where regulators even care about it.
conanbatt 7y ago
They can't be a central bank because they are not a government.
- vageli 7y ago
  > They can't be a central bank because they are not a government. Isn't the federal reserve in the United States a private corporation that is not part of the government?
  - conanbatt 7y ago
    No, they are not a private entity in that sense. They president is appointed by the president. They are a (theoretically) independent organism.

asveikau 7y ago

Alternatively, a private entity which is typically described as under-regulated in its existing businesses thinks it can pivot into central banking without scrutiny.

conanbatt 7y ago
Having a currency is not the definition of a central bank. Central banks are public institutions with responsibilities within a government. Casinos that issue their own chips are not central banks.

andirk 7y ago

I worked for a mobile gaming company who did mainly casino games with fake chips that you could buy, and they're now under investigation for violating gambling laws because their chips _acted like real money_ therefore the same laws apply. Might be the same with crypto money where they'll be under the same laws as real money and trading.