9 ms·

Open Libra: An open platform for financial inclusion

139 points by yosoyubik 7y ago

1ba9115454 7y ago
It's a nice marketing twist, Libra but not managed by Facebook. Not sure that will be enough though. Looming at the repo this is implemented in Rust, along with Libra itself. Nice to see Rust being used on a big oroject like this.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Facebook's implementation of Libra used Rust too.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    Factually correct. not sure why this is being downvoted. https://github.com/libra/libra/blob/master/Cargo.toml https://github.com/libra/libra/blob/master/Cargo.toml
    - mkl 7y ago
      > Looming at the repo this is implemented in Rust, along with Libra itself. It seems to be just repeating something from the comment it's a reply to (though it is worded unusually, so I may have misunderstood in the opposite direction).
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  A misleading one because Libra is not managed by any one entity.
- nordsieck 7y ago
  > It's a nice marketing twist, Libra but not managed by Facebook. It's not possible to do Libra (or any other pegged currency) without really, really deep pockets. This will be DOA if it gets any traction at all.
  - 1ba9115454 7y ago
    I didn't realise it was pegged. So agreed without deep pockets it will be difficult.
    - nordsieck 7y ago
      > I didn't realise it was pegged. So agreed without deep pockets it will be difficult. I did a bit of research just to make sure I wasn't mis-remembering > Libra would operate as a stablecoin. That means its value would be pegged to a basket of specific currencies and backed by assets denominated in those currencies. [1] I'm sure FB has good employees, but so did the Bank of England. [2] I just don't understand decisions like this. ___ 1. https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-libra-currency-will-be-tied-to-the-us-dollar-51569265722 https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-libra-currency-wil... 2. https://www.thebalance.com/black-wednesday-george-soros-bet-against-britain-1978944 https://www.thebalance.com/black-wednesday-george-soros-bet-...
      - eru 7y ago
        Libra is pretty vague about how they would peg. What's the connection to the GBP supposed to show? You can uphold a peg given the right setup, the pound just didn't have that. (And in this case, the British economy was better off with a cheaper pound.) Eg balances in my bank account are very successfully pegged to cash. Similar the HKD has been pegged to the USD without much issue for a few decades now.
- est31 7y ago
  Rust is really big in the cryptocurrency space. It stated with parity and then spread to many others.
chipperyman573 7y ago
Plot twist, releasing this was the plan all along and Facebook's failure was just marketing.
yosoyubik 7y ago
Here some pictures[1][2] at devcon5. - [1] https://twitter.com/lrettig/status/1181771915557367808 https://twitter.com/lrettig/status/1181771915557367808 - [2] https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/1181771115749728256 https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/1181771115749728256
- dotdi 7y ago
  The first reply to tweet #1 is > Imagine how good this would be if Lucas hadn’t already exitscammed from his previous project in 2018? Can somebody shed some light on that?
  - toxicFork 7y ago
    Another tweet below talks about ICOs https://twitter.com/alee/status/1181784770902016000 https://twitter.com/alee/status/1181784770902016000 " My friends and I invested $1M in Lucas’ @wirelineio ICO in 2018 I haven’t heard from Lucas Geiger in months Lots of false promises made by their advisor @zaoyang - such as @JUN_Omise would lead their marketing, @ethereumecf would be their investor "
    - codebolt 7y ago
      I've never heard of Wireline before, but looking at the above tweet and a quick glance at their website (https://www.wireline.io https://www.wireline.io) makes this whole thing smell like a team of amateurs running a scam. Why anyone would think it would be a good idea to dump a million USD into any ICO is beyond me.
      - andrewlee500 7y ago
        hey hey it was me :) 1. they promised this would be ethereum community fund's first ever investment 2. they promised q2 2018 token release guidance 3. they promised jun hasegawa would mentor Lucas Geiger to lead a huge marketing campaign 4. they promised other investors were in the round: golem, augur, matt mullenweg, wendell davis, david lee (refactor), dhvc, hashed, qtum and others are investors. i never confirmed if they really were all invested, but this is what was marketed to me
adamkas 7y ago
troll? fb will sue the shit out of this project just because of the name :D
namanaggarwal 7y ago
A bit off topic, in the list people are from "Singapore University". Which Singapore university are they referring to. Singapore has several universities none of them is named just "Singapore University"
- perch56 7y ago
  I think you’re right on topic with this. They don’t inspire much trust to me now that I had a look into this. Apparently it’s one person that graduated at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), at least according to their LinkedIn profile, however when I look at the page it seems that the entire SUTD endorses the project.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dchest 7y ago
  SUTD (I googled the names, took two seconds)
  - namanaggarwal 7y ago
    Yes googling the names provide the info, my point was more on the website. Saying just "Singapore University" could imply more prestigious university like National University of Singapore, which is not the case here.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
roadbeats 7y ago
Cryptocurrency community likes to label and market every fork, every iteration of these coins as a brand new innovation and celebrate so early. Even I have zero sympathy for Facebook, their credibility on building tech is incomparable to this sort of opportunist movements.
sneak 7y ago
What problem does Libra solve? What problem does this project solve better?
- hihatn 7y ago
  Facebook wants money, this makes them money faster than their other business.
Isonomix 7y ago
Meditate on who you want to control our financial future or create the first real one world currency. I sure as hell choose Zuckerberg dead last. I would rather a Kim Jung oom ffs. I will support Open Libra and anything that goes against Facebook
lngnmn1 7y ago
meme-driven development. literally.
biolurker1 7y ago
a open platform for financial inclusion is running successfully for a decade now. It's OSS and you know the name already
sgeisler 7y ago
The value in libra isn't in some novel technical concept. From what I have seen they made some ugly trade-offs to make the whole thing scale, invented their own not-state-of-the-art BFT algorithm and invented a new programming language for smart contracts that looks a bit saner than the EVM stuff. The real selling point is the partnership with major payment services, CC companies etc. If it succeeds you might be able to pay with libra at every POS terminal and that would be huge. If the base layer is as permissionless as advertised that could even be used to build proxies that allow Bitcoin payments at every POS terminal. The second interesting idea is the monetary basket backing it. That would take some control out of government's hands and would discourage overly reckless money printing since people would have a damn easy way of both detecting it (e.g. looking at the Libra/€ price) and opting out (buying Libra). If all big fiat currencies aren't stable enough even gold or BTC could be chosen as a backing asset. If OpenLibra can't replicate this they have a totally worthless project, not much different from all the other altcoins out there.
- pjc50 7y ago
  > looking at the Libra/€ price But that's affected mostly by factors other than money supply? > all big fiat currencies aren't stable enough even gold or BTC BTC does not provide price stability. Hardly anyone quotes long term fixed prices in BTC, they quote them in USD/BTC spot converted prices. You can see this in how BTC has tracked up and down against the dollar across a huge range.
  - sgeisler 7y ago
    > But that's affected mostly by factors other than money supply? That's a good point. I think the "mostly" is highly dependent on the rate of "money printing" and where exactly this money goes. But the Libra/Fiat rate might not be necessary anymore as an indicator once it becomes a useful indicator because of rising consumer good prices. > BTC does not provide price stability. If bitcoin gets adopted more widely and has a bigger market cap the volatility should go down. The supply shocks every ~4y due to the block reward halving are getting smaller too. But sure, a free market money will never be as stable as a currency with central bank interference. For me that's not a bug but a feature, it doesn't shield market participants from economic realities, so they can actually adapt.
a13n 7y ago
So you're going to build Libra and market it under the same name with "Open" tacked on the front? Sounds like obvious trademark infringement. I'll bet they get a cease and desist before the week's over. It's like selling hamburgers and fries at OpenMcDonalds. How is that not super confusing to the public?
Uptrenda 7y ago
I don't recognize any of these team members as having made any substantive contributions to major areas in blockchain security or scaling; Having raised a lot of money in funding is not relevant experience here; Nor is building a few side-chains and inefficiently linking them together. Reading between the lines here: the real message seems to be that a bunch of opportunist nobodies decided to get together to exploit Libras public image for their own benefit. It's the same pattern I've seen done many times over the years. "Hey, these people are really evil for being so wealthy. We of course secretly want to be wealthy too but we're totally different to they are." Then when you reach your goal you become the new "villain" for someone else and the cycle repeats. Blockchain companies love to paint themselves as the hero. Completely outside the reach of regular politics or capitalistic desires. It's even been a popular launch tactic for a while now. Dark wallet did it to great effect; And every iteration of dark web market has done it since; You can even see it in the 'us' vs 'them' mentality inherent in most "decentralized" system design. Only, here the architects are the main influences and not the regulators... But lets be honest here: this group shouldn't be trusted any more than a normal, profit-seeking company. And I see no reason to believe this team could deliver a more secure or scalable cryptocurrency than any that already exists. Tl; dr, gimme money and prestige plz.
- haasted 7y ago
  Interestingly, the list of team members appear to have vanished from the homepage.
ilaksh 7y ago
I thought we already had a ton of "open platforms for financial inclusion". They are called "cryptocurrencies". Like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin, etc.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
datasolo 7y ago
(XLM) Stellar is an existing alternative.
pointerpointer 7y ago
If you want to present yourself as an alternative for FB's libra, this is way too cheap. Even the worst alt coins have a better website and more info. > Our core team and community I mean, how can anyone take this serious? The core team could easily be just 1 person in the list. And the 'community', are that some far relatives who said "yeah good idea!"? The website is made within an hour or so, writing the text has taken longer for sure. This is a scam. Just some smart guys trying to launch and cash in on an alt coin that is a made up solution for FB's libra coin.
- rethab 7y ago
  oh come on, the repository linked to from "contribute to our codebase" has one contributor and four commits!! ;-)
  - tsukurimashou 7y ago
    don't forget "follow our progress" -> link to twitter -> "Open Libra hasn't twitted yet". I wonder what are all those names listed on the website.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >This is a scam. Maybe not. It could also be idealistic college kids who are underestimating the difficulty in launching a successful currency and don't understand that FB's reach and partnership with established processors is the primary reason anyone takes Libra seriously.
  - spookthesunset 7y ago
    When you start with the premise that 99% of crypto is either an outright scam or what will eventually turn into a scam it is fairly safe to call this project a scam too.
Nanocurrency 7y ago
People like these make cryptocurrency look even worse. Hopefully they delete this website and their shitty project, and life moves on.
xorcist 7y ago
How are they going to maintain the peg without the resources of Facebook/Paypal/Visa etc.? If they won't then it doesn't really compete with what Libra aspires to be.
handelaar 7y ago
I fear someone not smart enough to think of "Libre Libra" instead, might not be smart enough to get it done
gremlinsinc 7y ago
I'd rather see a state like California try to create their own crypto, make it mandatory that brick/mortar stores accept it, and add some FDIC type protection layer and then figure out a way to bake in guaranteed basic income. That would be world-changing. It would need some centralization to ensure gamers don't double dip and get 2x benefits from the dole. There have been a gazillion discussions on how to ensure single identity in a coin that has basic income baked into it, and as far as I can tell nobody has a good solution, some web of trust protocols are promising but still way early in being useful. I think the only way GBI will ever work though is via some sort of crypto, waiting for the governments to enact anything will probably fail, and crypto being electronic it drives cost down even more (no printing of checks required - all automated).
- nostrademons 7y ago
  The thing is that the mechanics of how to implement a cryptocurrency are changing rapidly, and the most common cryptocurrencies still have major technological flaws, and I'd hate to see a state enshrine those flaws into law. Proof-of-work has a bunch of issues surrounding electricity usage, transaction scalability, and latency. It's not acceptable for a commonly-used currency to take 11 minutes to confirm transactions, nor is it acceptable for it to use more electricity than Ireland to do so. There's a bunch of research on fixing this, from various proof-of-stake systems to new consensus protocols to Nano's precomputed proof-of-work to Iota's tangle. But none of them have the track record that Bitcoin does, nor do we know if they're secure under concerted attack, nor do we know whether they'll lead to eventual centralization of power and the ability of a few actors to rewrite the ledger. I'd like to see more experimentation in this space and some actual usage with special-purpose applications before it gets rolled out by fiat across the world. The other thing I'd really like to see is automated central banking. I don't buy the "you never need a central bank; let's just have a deflationary currency!" arguments, but at the same time central banks have a lot of problems with measurement, fairness, and incentives. I'd love to see the whole institution replaced by a computer that automatically maintains stable prices by giving money to everyone to expand the money supply and sucking it out (taxation?) to contract it, which was Milton Friedman's original idea when he came up with monetarism. To my knowledge nobody's really building this, though, and it requires solving some thorny problems in how exactly you measure price levels.
democracy 7y ago
>> the most respected blockchains technologies such as Ethereum, Cosmos, Wireline, and Radicle / Oscoin. The most outstanding thing about Etherium was the owner jumping the ship with the millions of real paper dollars. Him and the light coin guy. Now that was really impressive.
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  Wait, I remember the lite coin guy cashing out. Did Vitalik do the same thing?
zelly 7y ago
It's called Bitcoin.
wyck 7y ago
>>Surveillance finance. One's ability to engage financially (e.g. borrow in Libra) will potentially be determined by their social graph and online activity. Say what?
spraveenitpro 7y ago
No Thanks.

139 points by yosoyubik 7y ago

It's a nice marketing twist, Libra but not managed by Facebook. Not sure that will be enough though. Looming at the repo this is implemented in Rust, along with Libra itself. Nice to see Rust being used on a big oroject like this.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Facebook's implementation of Libra used Rust too.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  Factually correct. not sure why this is being downvoted. https://github.com/libra/libra/blob/master/Cargo.toml https://github.com/libra/libra/blob/master/Cargo.toml
  - mkl 7y ago
    > Looming at the repo this is implemented in Rust, along with Libra itself. It seems to be just repeating something from the comment it's a reply to (though it is worded unusually, so I may have misunderstood in the opposite direction).
jimmaswell 7y ago
A misleading one because Libra is not managed by any one entity.
nordsieck 7y ago
> It's a nice marketing twist, Libra but not managed by Facebook. It's not possible to do Libra (or any other pegged currency) without really, really deep pockets. This will be DOA if it gets any traction at all.
- 1ba9115454 7y ago
  I didn't realise it was pegged. So agreed without deep pockets it will be difficult.
  - nordsieck 7y ago
    > I didn't realise it was pegged. So agreed without deep pockets it will be difficult. I did a bit of research just to make sure I wasn't mis-remembering > Libra would operate as a stablecoin. That means its value would be pegged to a basket of specific currencies and backed by assets denominated in those currencies. [1] I'm sure FB has good employees, but so did the Bank of England. [2] I just don't understand decisions like this. ___ 1. https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-libra-currency-will-be-tied-to-the-us-dollar-51569265722 https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-libra-currency-wil... 2. https://www.thebalance.com/black-wednesday-george-soros-bet-against-britain-1978944 https://www.thebalance.com/black-wednesday-george-soros-bet-...
    - eru 7y ago
      Libra is pretty vague about how they would peg. What's the connection to the GBP supposed to show? You can uphold a peg given the right setup, the pound just didn't have that. (And in this case, the British economy was better off with a cheaper pound.) Eg balances in my bank account are very successfully pegged to cash. Similar the HKD has been pegged to the USD without much issue for a few decades now.
est31 7y ago
Rust is really big in the cryptocurrency space. It stated with parity and then spread to many others.

chipperyman573 7y ago

Plot twist, releasing this was the plan all along and Facebook's failure was just marketing.

yosoyubik 7y ago

Here some pictures[1][2] at devcon5. - [1] https://twitter.com/lrettig/status/1181771915557367808 https://twitter.com/lrettig/status/1181771915557367808 - [2] https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/1181771115749728256 https://twitter.com/santisiri/status/1181771115749728256

dotdi 7y ago
The first reply to tweet #1 is > Imagine how good this would be if Lucas hadn’t already exitscammed from his previous project in 2018? Can somebody shed some light on that?
- toxicFork 7y ago
  Another tweet below talks about ICOs https://twitter.com/alee/status/1181784770902016000 https://twitter.com/alee/status/1181784770902016000 " My friends and I invested $1M in Lucas’ @wirelineio ICO in 2018 I haven’t heard from Lucas Geiger in months Lots of false promises made by their advisor @zaoyang - such as @JUN_Omise would lead their marketing, @ethereumecf would be their investor "
  - codebolt 7y ago
    I've never heard of Wireline before, but looking at the above tweet and a quick glance at their website (https://www.wireline.io https://www.wireline.io) makes this whole thing smell like a team of amateurs running a scam. Why anyone would think it would be a good idea to dump a million USD into any ICO is beyond me.
    - andrewlee500 7y ago
      hey hey it was me :) 1. they promised this would be ethereum community fund's first ever investment 2. they promised q2 2018 token release guidance 3. they promised jun hasegawa would mentor Lucas Geiger to lead a huge marketing campaign 4. they promised other investors were in the round: golem, augur, matt mullenweg, wendell davis, david lee (refactor), dhvc, hashed, qtum and others are investors. i never confirmed if they really were all invested, but this is what was marketed to me

adamkas 7y ago

troll? fb will sue the shit out of this project just because of the name :D

namanaggarwal 7y ago

A bit off topic, in the list people are from "Singapore University". Which Singapore university are they referring to. Singapore has several universities none of them is named just "Singapore University"

perch56 7y ago
I think you’re right on topic with this. They don’t inspire much trust to me now that I had a look into this. Apparently it’s one person that graduated at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), at least according to their LinkedIn profile, however when I look at the page it seems that the entire SUTD endorses the project.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dchest 7y ago
SUTD (I googled the names, took two seconds)
- namanaggarwal 7y ago
  Yes googling the names provide the info, my point was more on the website. Saying just "Singapore University" could imply more prestigious university like National University of Singapore, which is not the case here.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

roadbeats 7y ago

Cryptocurrency community likes to label and market every fork, every iteration of these coins as a brand new innovation and celebrate so early. Even I have zero sympathy for Facebook, their credibility on building tech is incomparable to this sort of opportunist movements.

sneak 7y ago

What problem does Libra solve? What problem does this project solve better?

hihatn 7y ago
Facebook wants money, this makes them money faster than their other business.

Isonomix 7y ago

Meditate on who you want to control our financial future or create the first real one world currency. I sure as hell choose Zuckerberg dead last. I would rather a Kim Jung oom ffs. I will support Open Libra and anything that goes against Facebook

lngnmn1 7y ago

meme-driven development. literally.

biolurker1 7y ago

a open platform for financial inclusion is running successfully for a decade now. It's OSS and you know the name already

sgeisler 7y ago

The value in libra isn't in some novel technical concept. From what I have seen they made some ugly trade-offs to make the whole thing scale, invented their own not-state-of-the-art BFT algorithm and invented a new programming language for smart contracts that looks a bit saner than the EVM stuff. The real selling point is the partnership with major payment services, CC companies etc. If it succeeds you might be able to pay with libra at every POS terminal and that would be huge. If the base layer is as permissionless as advertised that could even be used to build proxies that allow Bitcoin payments at every POS terminal. The second interesting idea is the monetary basket backing it. That would take some control out of government's hands and would discourage overly reckless money printing since people would have a damn easy way of both detecting it (e.g. looking at the Libra/€ price) and opting out (buying Libra). If all big fiat currencies aren't stable enough even gold or BTC could be chosen as a backing asset. If OpenLibra can't replicate this they have a totally worthless project, not much different from all the other altcoins out there.

pjc50 7y ago
> looking at the Libra/€ price But that's affected mostly by factors other than money supply? > all big fiat currencies aren't stable enough even gold or BTC BTC does not provide price stability. Hardly anyone quotes long term fixed prices in BTC, they quote them in USD/BTC spot converted prices. You can see this in how BTC has tracked up and down against the dollar across a huge range.
- sgeisler 7y ago
  > But that's affected mostly by factors other than money supply? That's a good point. I think the "mostly" is highly dependent on the rate of "money printing" and where exactly this money goes. But the Libra/Fiat rate might not be necessary anymore as an indicator once it becomes a useful indicator because of rising consumer good prices. > BTC does not provide price stability. If bitcoin gets adopted more widely and has a bigger market cap the volatility should go down. The supply shocks every ~4y due to the block reward halving are getting smaller too. But sure, a free market money will never be as stable as a currency with central bank interference. For me that's not a bug but a feature, it doesn't shield market participants from economic realities, so they can actually adapt.

a13n 7y ago

So you're going to build Libra and market it under the same name with "Open" tacked on the front? Sounds like obvious trademark infringement. I'll bet they get a cease and desist before the week's over. It's like selling hamburgers and fries at OpenMcDonalds. How is that not super confusing to the public?

Uptrenda 7y ago

I don't recognize any of these team members as having made any substantive contributions to major areas in blockchain security or scaling; Having raised a lot of money in funding is not relevant experience here; Nor is building a few side-chains and inefficiently linking them together. Reading between the lines here: the real message seems to be that a bunch of opportunist nobodies decided to get together to exploit Libras public image for their own benefit. It's the same pattern I've seen done many times over the years. "Hey, these people are really evil for being so wealthy. We of course secretly want to be wealthy too but we're totally different to they are." Then when you reach your goal you become the new "villain" for someone else and the cycle repeats. Blockchain companies love to paint themselves as the hero. Completely outside the reach of regular politics or capitalistic desires. It's even been a popular launch tactic for a while now. Dark wallet did it to great effect; And every iteration of dark web market has done it since; You can even see it in the 'us' vs 'them' mentality inherent in most "decentralized" system design. Only, here the architects are the main influences and not the regulators... But lets be honest here: this group shouldn't be trusted any more than a normal, profit-seeking company. And I see no reason to believe this team could deliver a more secure or scalable cryptocurrency than any that already exists. Tl; dr, gimme money and prestige plz.

haasted 7y ago
Interestingly, the list of team members appear to have vanished from the homepage.

ilaksh 7y ago

I thought we already had a ton of "open platforms for financial inclusion". They are called "cryptocurrencies". Like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin, etc.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

datasolo 7y ago

(XLM) Stellar is an existing alternative.

pointerpointer 7y ago

If you want to present yourself as an alternative for FB's libra, this is way too cheap. Even the worst alt coins have a better website and more info. > Our core team and community I mean, how can anyone take this serious? The core team could easily be just 1 person in the list. And the 'community', are that some far relatives who said "yeah good idea!"? The website is made within an hour or so, writing the text has taken longer for sure. This is a scam. Just some smart guys trying to launch and cash in on an alt coin that is a made up solution for FB's libra coin.

rethab 7y ago
oh come on, the repository linked to from "contribute to our codebase" has one contributor and four commits!! ;-)
- tsukurimashou 7y ago
  don't forget "follow our progress" -> link to twitter -> "Open Libra hasn't twitted yet". I wonder what are all those names listed on the website.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>This is a scam. Maybe not. It could also be idealistic college kids who are underestimating the difficulty in launching a successful currency and don't understand that FB's reach and partnership with established processors is the primary reason anyone takes Libra seriously.
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  When you start with the premise that 99% of crypto is either an outright scam or what will eventually turn into a scam it is fairly safe to call this project a scam too.

Nanocurrency 7y ago

People like these make cryptocurrency look even worse. Hopefully they delete this website and their shitty project, and life moves on.

xorcist 7y ago

How are they going to maintain the peg without the resources of Facebook/Paypal/Visa etc.? If they won't then it doesn't really compete with what Libra aspires to be.

handelaar 7y ago

I fear someone not smart enough to think of "Libre Libra" instead, might not be smart enough to get it done

gremlinsinc 7y ago

I'd rather see a state like California try to create their own crypto, make it mandatory that brick/mortar stores accept it, and add some FDIC type protection layer and then figure out a way to bake in guaranteed basic income. That would be world-changing. It would need some centralization to ensure gamers don't double dip and get 2x benefits from the dole. There have been a gazillion discussions on how to ensure single identity in a coin that has basic income baked into it, and as far as I can tell nobody has a good solution, some web of trust protocols are promising but still way early in being useful. I think the only way GBI will ever work though is via some sort of crypto, waiting for the governments to enact anything will probably fail, and crypto being electronic it drives cost down even more (no printing of checks required - all automated).

nostrademons 7y ago
The thing is that the mechanics of how to implement a cryptocurrency are changing rapidly, and the most common cryptocurrencies still have major technological flaws, and I'd hate to see a state enshrine those flaws into law. Proof-of-work has a bunch of issues surrounding electricity usage, transaction scalability, and latency. It's not acceptable for a commonly-used currency to take 11 minutes to confirm transactions, nor is it acceptable for it to use more electricity than Ireland to do so. There's a bunch of research on fixing this, from various proof-of-stake systems to new consensus protocols to Nano's precomputed proof-of-work to Iota's tangle. But none of them have the track record that Bitcoin does, nor do we know if they're secure under concerted attack, nor do we know whether they'll lead to eventual centralization of power and the ability of a few actors to rewrite the ledger. I'd like to see more experimentation in this space and some actual usage with special-purpose applications before it gets rolled out by fiat across the world. The other thing I'd really like to see is automated central banking. I don't buy the "you never need a central bank; let's just have a deflationary currency!" arguments, but at the same time central banks have a lot of problems with measurement, fairness, and incentives. I'd love to see the whole institution replaced by a computer that automatically maintains stable prices by giving money to everyone to expand the money supply and sucking it out (taxation?) to contract it, which was Milton Friedman's original idea when he came up with monetarism. To my knowledge nobody's really building this, though, and it requires solving some thorny problems in how exactly you measure price levels.

democracy 7y ago

>> the most respected blockchains technologies such as Ethereum, Cosmos, Wireline, and Radicle / Oscoin. The most outstanding thing about Etherium was the owner jumping the ship with the millions of real paper dollars. Him and the light coin guy. Now that was really impressive.

spookthesunset 7y ago
Wait, I remember the lite coin guy cashing out. Did Vitalik do the same thing?

zelly 7y ago

It's called Bitcoin.

wyck 7y ago

>>Surveillance finance. One's ability to engage financially (e.g. borrow in Libra) will potentially be determined by their social graph and online activity. Say what?

spraveenitpro 7y ago

No Thanks.