Ok here’s one vote against. Luckily votes will no longer matter. No offense.
“Luckily” ?
I wouldn’t use the descriptor “luckily” but he’s right. That’s where they want to go.
Sorry to have abandoned this thread. I went away on a trip and forgot I had posted about this.
As bad as Facebook is and as atrocious and cavalier with privacy as they are, I worry about Amazon and Google just as much. The more that these FANG companies and their offshoots invest away from tech and more into ‘hard’ products that we rely on every day - things like food, transportation, energy - the more control they could potentially have. The tech and data side of their business enables them to hack our brains - we know that. But as we already know, they gather data to influence our commerce and what we purchase. What Facebook is trying to do (and I think others will follow) is to reward our thoughts and consumption by giving us some tokens to play with, but those tokens could be the currency by which future transactions take place. And the Machine follows you everywhere you go. It can even predict where you’re about to go, who you’re about to visit, what you’re about to do, and more importantly, what you’re about to consume.
Libra is back in the news and most of the news is not good.
It should be the end, but it won’t be. Facebook is too big to just give up; they have the financial strength to try and bend the system to their will.
That would be awesome, I’m sure.
Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what anyone wants, because Facebook is a giant, non-corporeal ‘person’ who simultaneously exists all over the world.
The difference is subtle but important. As a currency is issued by a government, the laws of that country support the currency - in that people are legally required to accept the currency as valid payment. That’s part of what lets a currency retain value. But you are right, the future is unknown territory and if a company gets big enough to provide everything you need then you have that company’s promise to accept their points as value and it should be reliable, so it could be a distinction without difference. But the govt. could collapse with the drop in tax revenue. lols
It looks like it’s dead in the water, whatever Facebook says.
There’s no real use for it except building Facebook’s little empire and getting round government regulations. And if it can’t be used to get round government regulations, there’s no incentive for anyone to use it.
As I pointed out earlier on this thread, solutions already exist to allow people without bank accounts to transfer money and make payments using only a phone. Such systems have been in use successfully for many years in third-world countries, using real currencies, not company points. Not even a smart phone is necessary.
Seems like public opinion and the market solved this one pretty well. No one wants Facebook to run a monetary system because Facebook is not trustworthy.
Most credit card companies aren’t trustworthy, either, but we are happy to let them hold our money. The only difference is that your Visa gift card is denominated in dollars, but really that’s a meaningless distinction; if Visa goes bust, the US Government is not going to refund your gift card purchase price.
So long as Libra functions as a gift card it will probably be okay. The more they try to turn it into a true currency, the worse it will be.
I don’t understand who the target for these alternate currencies are supposed to be. I assume that this is probably not targeted to people in countries like Zimbabwe or Venezuela with unstable national currencies. If users are worried about major currencies like the dollar or euro becoming worthless, everyone is going to be having major problems, and having a few Libra (or bitcoin or actual gold coins) isn’t going to help in that type of scenario. What type of usage does Facebook foresee for this Libra? People paying for their Farmville and Candy Crush in game purchases?
I’m not sure that link proves anything. For one, it’s an allegation that Mastercard denies, for two, I don’t think that failing to abide by a law regulating fees they can charge, even if they did do it, relates very much to consumer trust.
I trust credit card companies, both explicitly and implicitly, vastly more than almost any other companies I regularly do business with.
Snowboarder Bo, sure, there are a lot of companies who would like to own and extract rents from a global monetary system. But it has ever been thus. There don’t seem to be a lot of customers interested, which is the real trick with monetary systems.
Interesting typo. 
I had no idea there was a wealth of data available re: the bolded part.
I suspect it is similar to the general public’s disinterest in using tethers to nuclear-powered teleporting ducks for transportation needs.
I’m not sure what you’re arguing here, but I think this supports my claim? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something. Could you rephrase your point?
There are lots and lots of examples of companies thinking “wouldn’t it be awesome if I could get a small percentage of a huge number of financial transactions!” and very few of them turn into anything because that’s not the hard part.
I am, like most people, disinterested in nuclear-powered-duck-teleportation, but if Facebook made a press release about an upcoming product in that arena, I don’t think that press release would be very convincing proof that it was going to happen.
Facebook now saying they won’t launch Libra unless “all” U.S. regulators approve.
I admit I’m unclear on exactly which U.S. regulators would have to approve a private scrip.
Because it’s a cryptocurrency that people may buy not with the intention to use it as private scrip but with the intention to profit off its appreciation (as many people have bought other cryptocurrencies), they have to convince the SEC that it’s not legally a security, or they have to convince the SEC that they’re selling it in the way that you are legally allowed to sell a security. Both of those are difficult tasks.
There might be others, but that’s the big one.
Zuckerberg testified to Congress today about Libra; it did not go smoothly for him.
It also serves to obfuscate the real value of what one is spending (often on impulse) which can be manipulated further, and can be used to sneak in price hikes or fixes much more easily.