>Facebook’s core revenue model around Libra is that more online commerce will lead businesses to spend more on Facebook ads
That's not believable, but I think it was meant as a believable motivation that could be told to people to make them feel like they understood Facebook's motivation.
It could be the most complete business model they've defined - that and interest on Libra deposits. Surely, the value of creating a new global financial payments platform and being the incumbent/biggest player will be fully realized in yet-to-be-imagined ways, but it would obviously sound bad for them to say that in a Senate hearing.
I would also guess that they don't actually know everything they want to use it for, but they know cryptocurrencies are hyped right now and don't want to miss out.
If Libra takes off, FB's AIs will not only know you and your friends talking about the flu, they will also know if that conversation ends with somebody purchasing more Purell. They might even boost the visibility of your conversation so that more people participate and more people buy Purell.
Although an instrument of the US Government, the Federal Reserve System considers itself "an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the board of governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.
So, if nobody votes the way I do, I should be happy that I got to vote even though I will never get the thing I want. I don't see why that's better than having that plus other options that help me today.
My democratic involvement doesn't begin and end at the vote. I'm a participant in the culture that collectively makes these decisions. I feel that I'm a part of "our" decision on most matters, even if I sometimes don't like our collective choice. I expect that my fellow citizen is reasonably competent and in good intention.
Seems like Americans have a very low opinion of their "collective" and are simultaneously fearful of its power over them. If that's more generally true in USA than elsewhere, then I wonder if it's just a product of the country's size, or if people can feel differently about this regarding their state vs. country.
If the Fed does something I don't like, and I write to my representatives about it, what can they do? It's pretty independent. Even the board members can be removed only by the President and only "for cause". It's not funded by Congressional appropriations.
In addition, though the Congress sets the goals for monetary policy, decisions of the Board--and the Fed's monetary policy-setting body, the Federal Open Market Committee--about how to reach those goals do not require approval by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government.https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
Are you arguing for more government control of monetary policy through regulating Facebook or less government control of monetary policy through Facebook's competing currency?
It seems like Facebook is worse in both directions. Both serving the interests of activist regulations and governed by a corporation with it's own interests first.
> I mean we don't normally let companies or individuals create their own currency right?
Actually that happens all the time; for example we have store credit, loyalty points, virtual "gold" in games, poker chips, and a long list of community currencies[1] like BerkShares.
Why wouldn't companies or individuals be able to create their own currencies? In the end it just means people are discussing and reaching consensus on the ownership and value of some common unit of account, which is a direct expression of the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of association, and ownership of property. (And by "property" I'm referring only to what is being bought or sold, not the currency itself, which in the case of virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies might not even be property, just pure information about a completely theoretical system which people happen to agree on, which is 100% a matter of speech.)
I guess that depends on how you define managing. I mean, the Fed couldn't do exactly whatever they wanted, the government would step in if it got too crazy.
But on the other hand, separating the government from the central bank is a fundamental idea in the whole central banking argument.
If it indeed was completely managed by and subjected to the full political influence of the government the US would probably have higher denomination bills [0].
The Fed is governed by laws Facebook isn't and it's board is appointed by the government.
The Fed has clear interest and motivation to have priorities in line with the country.
Facebook absolutely does not.
What happens when Facebook goes under and private capital bleeds it dry? (cough Toys R Us). I don't think Bain Capital's monetary policy would be good for us.
> I guess that depends on how you define managing.
The Board of Governors are government employees appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate; the Fed is as much part of the government as any of the other “independent” executive board/commissions/agencies.
I might have extrapolated a bit too much from my much deeper knowledge of my countries central bank system. But I gess it's fair to ish compare Supreme Court justices to fed governors (not easy to fire and long terms)?
My point was more that colechristensen's "appeal to democracy" seemed somewhat misguided. Both the Fed and the Supreme Court seems like the least "democratic" government institutions, in some sense. Not that it's bad, nor that I think that FB would be a better guardian of our money supply, but still.
Having more than one option is worth infinitely more to me than just one option I can vote on. It's not like the US dollar is going away. You present a simple example of false dichotomy rhetoric which hurts discussion and is uncharitable to the reasons someone could see the upsides of having Libra around.
Libra becoming a significant amount of trade takes soverenty away from governments. Giving it to Facebook is not giving it to the people, it's transferring it to a corporation.
There's no dichotomy there, but straightforward transfer of soverenty to a corporation.
Well, government in many countries is getting so detached from constituents that some people start to believe that unrestrained greed from corporations is the more dependable option. At least they behave in a predictable way that can be accomodated.
Yeah replace a monopoly you have a vote and moral grounds to demand changes in, with a dictator...eh.. a single board member majority ...
Great idea, monarchy was so awesome!
The government money monopoly is mandated by taxation, a defining feature of government. Without a money monopoly of some kind (including a demand that taxes be paid in a certain currency), there would be no government.
I very clearly worded my statement. I said "including a demand that taxes be paid in a certain currency". I didn't say 'a demand taxes be paid in a currency owned and controlled by the government', I said a currency. This is a very clear statement that already captures my thoughts on all the various media of exchange you mentioned.
If a government only accepts taxes in gold, then it is still demonstrating it has a monopoly on currency, because now gold becomes something everyone must own and thus will serve as a commonly accepted means of exchange for all those subject to taxation from the same government.
EDIT: For example, Ecuador uses the US Dollar, but don't be fooled to think the Ecuadorian government doesn't have a monopoly on the use of the dollar within Ecuador.
because the amount of gold the government is willing to accept gives the value to the gold, not the other way around. The gold would still be denominated in some government set standard and thus subject to governmental discernment in how much it's worth.
So you're actually just saying that the government has to tax to exist, and using the word "monopoly" wrong.
I actually don't know of a government that has a money monopoly. That would mean making a government-controlled currency the exclusive legal currency in the country.
If you don't agree with that definition of the word "monopoly," that's fine, but I don't want to discuss it. It's a word that has a valid meaning but is most commonly used in a way that is self-contradicting.
Oh come on. This comment was great, to the point, and led me to learn something new. OP's just calling it a financial Wild West but with historical backing of when it's been done before.
Any new system will necessarily have better oversight than the one that has co-evolved in a murky organic soup with cash and foreign exchange. Even bitcoin has more transparency than the majority of transactions today.
Watching some of those Senate hearings is like a trial organized by superstitious villagers. Libra is just a company scrip, like poker chips, which happens to be facilitated by a distributed ledger. I don't use Facebook because it is an abomination, but given the trend toward de-dollarization, the return of currency baskets and reserves made of special drawing rights, and effective negative interest rate policies, Libra may be the last best hope of the US to maintain its current level of influence in the international currency market. Only thing I recommend is that the company should just change it's name to Statebook.
> Libra may be the last best hope of the US to maintain its current level of influence in the international currency market
Sorry- what's the connection here? Libra will apparently be a basket of different major currencies, how does this benefit the US specifically? I say this as someone who would like to preserve dollar hegemony, I just don't see the connection
If the US doesn't take a lead in the fintech race China will take over the world. Imagine everyone in Africa, S.E. Asia, etc using Alipay. This takes away power from the US in control and de-dollarization.
You raised an interesting point about Alipay. But I’ve had equally fast transactions with Apple Pay/Android Pay. Why not double down on NFC payment options coupled with desktop devices instead of building an Alipay alternative?
If you’re using a credit card as source payment, you get a bank to protect your purchase and presumably some points or rebate?
I understand cryptocurrency as potential replacement to wire transfers and cash payments. But as a consumer friendly choice, why would somebody choose to pay with crypto over NFC pay (with banks promising purchase protection when coupled with credit card)?
You can't use Apple Pay on top of a bank account that doesn't exist. 1.7b of the people in emerging markets don't have access to banking services. 500m+ of them have internet/cells and many have Facebook/WhatsApp. Hence Facebook's interest.
Even though Libra will be HQ'd in Switzerland, FB control means US and State Dept. control by extension. If a Chinese company dominates payments for the unbanked, the dollar and SWIFT partners hegemony ends and that lever is much weaker.
Social network payments will be a "radical monopoly," and the ability to manipulate exchange rates on that platform gives absolute power over import/export prices. Probably not something you want to yield.
>> Watching some of those Senate hearings is like a trial organized by superstitious villagers
Once you accept that senate hearings are more political posturing than an actual trial, they make more sense.
The output of a senate hearing is not a guilty/not-guilty verdict or a vote or a decision, but soundbites and video clips that a politician can use for their next re-election campaign to demonstrate that they care about their constituents and are tough on the boogeyman of the year.
But in the end cash does provide benefits to me that libra doesn't. I am probably not the target group, but evidently this murky, organic soup can indeed net advantages.
"Better oversight" could just mean better oversight from facebook and affiliates. I fail to see the advantage.
I agree about the negative interests rates. Currencies like Dollar and Euro provide cash, but they are essentially configured to speed up consumption. So in that regard they are not sustainable.
> It is “not the intention at all” for Calibra to sell or directly monetize user data directly, though if it offered additional financial services in partnership with other financial organizations it would ask consent to use their data specifically for those purposes.
And of course, they'll get consent with a small EULA update to their existing users, knowing they won't read it.
This all comes down to Facebook and friends holding on to your money, making interest on it, while everybody passes their tokens around. Many other companies have been doing this for a very long time, just not in such a widespread way and opening their currencies up to whoever wants to use it.
Take xbox live's original currency (still in use) where you pay $X for Y coin. They had your money in the bank, while you had some coins in your account, just sitting there, doing nothing for you. They had a bit more control and you could only buy amounts of coin that were not equal to the amount of coin you had to spend to buy anything, so you always had some left in your account.
In Facebook's case, just the time it takes to convert money to Libra and then back into actual money will net them some interest on it. On such a large scale, that's a constant income.
They're trying to be a non-profit because they don't actually charge for the service, but the investors still make money by way of holding on to your cash while it's in Libra form.
> They're trying to be a non-profit because they don't actually charge for the service, but the investors still make money by way of holding on to your cash while it's in Libra form.
A not-for-profit can charge for service, and cannot return a profit to investors. Maybe they've ways to wiggle around the latter, but not charging for the service is simply irrelevant.
The non-profit could sell your financial transaction data to a for profit corp. for basically nothing. The for-profit then makes all the money selling the data to other corporate partners. Just one of the many ways I can see this being abused.
What they can do is pay massive bonuses and give their employees very nice perks. I attended a holiday party for non-profit where the prizes consisted of vacations, electronics, and plain old cash. We're talking about Disney Vacations for four, Mediterranean cruises, tropical resort packages, etc. I took home a sweet 65" LED TV and the prizes for the "games" (think musical chairs, limbo) started at $20 and went up to $1000. They easily gave away $50k in prizes to like 200 people.
Oh, and they had fire dancers, an open bar, and taxi reimbursement.
I don't know enough about the situation to say which bucket it falls in, where possible buckets include at least "there's nothing morally or legally wrong with that", "that's morally dubious but probably legally okay", "that's illegal but unlikely to be prosecuted", and "that's illegal and you got lucky".
Compensation of employees of a not-for-profit is certainly allowed - that's a different thing than returning profit to shareholders except when it isn't (in which case, IIUC, it comes with restrictions, which isn't to say it's never abused, which isn't to say it's never/always prosecuted, etc, etc...).
I explicitly admitted the possibility of wiggle room around the restrictions - my point was about what the restrictions referred to in the first place.
Remittances are a contentious issue. I'm a little ignorant of to what degree governing bodies will have oversight of the movement of money.
Is allowing for more unregulated monetary trade a bug or a feature of this system?
The issue comes in that financial regulations of the AML and OFAC variety are basically dependent on money only moving in significant amounts through institutions with a lot to lose by not playing ball, and the account creation process having as many controls as possible.
While the immutable ledger is nice, it isn't new, nor does it change the game at all. To be honest, the Libra thing wouldn't be much different at all given the right set of business processes being built around it.
The problem is who is doing it, and what they gain if they are actually allowed to implement those controls. Facebook would have an undisputed goldmine. Full data on every transaction you process through Libra, all your information as collected through integration with services like LexisNexis (which is bloody creepy by the way, even if it is based on public records) plus their already problematic information w.r.t their social network graph.
There is no way that much data collected in one place isn't a societal liability. Period. But no, we're getting reporting that regulators are worried about terrorists. Never mind that private currencies just make auditing and forensic accounting that much more difficult.
Well there's this whole thing about fighting terrorism and money laundering, and individual rights and small government, etc. In this context it's odd for the government to be picking winners. We are also the leaders in crypto. Many US citizens are involved in crypto. It's almost as if the government had a stake in GM and so started making rules against Ford under the guise of public safety. Doesn't it seem like this should have zero effect on policy decision? If not, shouldn't the rest of the world then also be looking out for their own interests and make sure that the dollar reserve status is undermined? The latter isn't beneficial to the US, so framing it that way seems like a bit of a slip.
> If not, shouldn't the rest of the world then also be looking out for their own interests and make sure that the dollar reserve status is undermined?
I'm confused by most of what you wrote. The rest of the world is looking after their own interests, that's why nearly every country has its own currency. It's why the Euro exists. It's why the Federal Reserve isn't literally the global central bank controlling a single currency that everyone on earth must use. The Eurozone - for one example - is and always has been interested in promoting the Euro as a dollar-competing global currency.
Russia and China, as the primary military competitors to the US (and China as the sole economic superpower competitor to the US), are persistently attempting to either compete with or undermine the US dollar hegemony. Russia hasn't been subtle about wanting to see the dollar's prominence reduced for most of Putin's time in office.
Since crypto is global Mnuchin (rightly) mentioned that he needs to work with the rest of the world to achieve his goals. But if his stated goals are to bolster the US currency that will not be a great motivator for other countries to cooperate.
every country has its own currency. It's why the Euro exists
These two statements are contradictory. Ask the ordinary Greeks or Italians if they feel the Euro supports their national interests. The Italians are even talking about rebooting the Lira now.
How do we ensure that they don't politically discriminate against people? What happen if they block you on facebook? At least if the government is doing something I don't like I can vote for a different one, how can I influence facebook decisions? I'd rather have someone who must uphold the first amendment managing my money than someone who don't or even worst, will take the interest and demands of countries like China into consideration.
Isn't this currency play just a way for Facebook to get more data? Data about social interactions and how they influence purchase decisions would be very marketable, especially to e-commerce businesses that want to take on Amazon.
It's also a potential moat for FB to protect its ad business against encroachment by Amazon's own ad business.
No, it's about increasing revenue per user for their fastest growing market (emerging market) by giving access to the 500m+ unbanked people that have internet/cells/FB/WhatsApp in these markets a way to access the digital economy, so they can actually buy things people advertise on Facebook, driving up the price for those ads.
They can make a killing on this without needing to touch anyone's data.
Besides, the lions share of FB's current revenue still comes from US Ad spending. Amazon's dominance of e-commerce threatens this because people who want to buy something increasingly just go to Amazon.com. Amazon's ads offer the opportunity to influence consumers at the end of the conversion funnel.
But this means that Amazon will get a bigger slice of both the ad spend and the purchase data which FB doesn't yet have. Their ad business already makes almost $3B a quarter - that's almost 1/5th of FB's revenue. This is money that likely would otherwise have gone to FB/Google, but isn't anymore.
This is big threat to FB's core business in what is their most lucrative market right now. Would they leverage this data to try to keep their ad business competitive? I certainly think so. Just imagine how much stuff an AI that knows your purchases and your social life can get you to buy.
FB is banned in China but outside of China I definitely could imagine a fierce competition between FB and a Chinese tech conglomerate over payments. I think the challenge for FB will be govts. China is investing huge money in developing countries around the world, and they may pressure the host countries to make life harder for FB so their companies have an advantage.
I think a lot of the confusion around Facebook's motivations with Libra lie around the fact that Americans think they're the main target customer. It becomes more clear when you realize (by literally reading the copy on the front page of the Libra website, mind you) that the emerging markets (FB's fastest growing sector) are the real target.
But it looks like Facebook doesn't know much about emerging markets either. Internet.org didn't go over well in some places. Letting Americans set moderation policy for Myanmar. Now they're talking about supporting unbanked people in the developing world... with KYC. Many unbanked people do not have "proper" ID and Facebook probably doesn't know how to parse such IDs anyway.
There are some very interesting posts being flagged and killed in this thread that I feel raise some very valid points.
My chief contention with allowing Facebook and ilk the ability to expand their influence and authority is that the motivations of such entities are, at best, amoral. There seems to be a troublingly significant movement of people who seem to think that Facebook, Google et al are doing god's work when it comes to their political involvement. But these companies ultimately will only serve their own interests.
Democracy has its obvious pitfalls. You may often feel like you as an individual are not well served by the democratic process, as I often do not, but the democratic process _is_ there. It provides a mechanism that is fundamentally egalitarian for society to steer the direction of its governing bodies by voting. FAANG is not bound to such a restrictive system, their motivations concede no moral imperative. There is no incentive for them to suffer the inconveniences of egalitarian principles any further than it serves their agenda.
What posts are being flagged and killed in this thread? I don't see any.
If you a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you should vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp, then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. This is precisely why we added that feature.
There was one in particular post I was referring to, it looks like someone has vouched for it since my noting it. Thanks for pointing that out, I was unaware. I'm not sure I have the rep necessary however.
I can’t say it’s been a particularly good time for democracy in America. We’ve elected a narcissist reality tv star to the highest office, we have mass political gridlock, more political games than actually getting things done (infrastructure, healthcare, etc), and we’re feeling the heat from a rising billion person economy run under a non democratic system.
Be that as it may, none of this is a good justification for moving further towards oligarchy or totalitarianism. There has been much talk about how support of big-tech censorship is skewing left, which I consider to be quite ironic since I had always associated the left, at least historically, with egalitarianism.
Those are a lot of big conceptual ideas, I think at the end of the day people just want to know what will make their lives better. And if the big conceptual idea of democracy starts to lose its shiny appeal then fewer people will jump in to defend it as an inherent good.
Or to put it another way, what would be good justification to reconsider our political system? If the answer is nothing then we're just following our system like a religion. We ought to be able to discuss the upsides (there are some pretty great ones) and downsides (everything has tradeoffs).
Of course we should question our political beliefs, I would never advocate for anything else. I like to employ a rhetorical device against myself sometimes to question my more hard-line stances: I ask myself "What evidence would convince me that I'm wrong?". It's quite an interesting question to ask, I think it helps you come to a better understand of your beliefs.
I disagree with your dismissal of my point, with your saying that "
Those are a lot of big conceptual ideas". These are big, but _important_ ideas. Abstract as they may be, they describe tangible concepts that have a lot of importance.
"I think at the end of the day people just want to know what will make their lives better" - Yes, therein lies the unfortunate complexity of politics.
As I said in my original post ( way up there ), I don't defend democracy because I believe that it best serves me ( I've felt for a long time that it serves other people's needs far better than mine ). I defend it because it's the best system I'm aware of for egalitarianism at scale.
Moving social networks into banking seems to be an excellent business opportunity for social networks!
Suddenly they can make money from their users directly, rather than from selling their users to advertising customers.
I think Apple should investigate doing the same; make it so you can have an iBankAccount, and use phones to transfer money and pay etc using Apple as a bank. Apple could beat Facebook at this. And with Tim Cook at the helm, we might actually trust them more than Facebook and the current crop of actual banks.
The thing I don't get is the 'crypto' part of the currency; why that? Why not just become FaceBank and do it the old fashioned way?
I want to note that KakaoTalk [0], which is the de-facto messenger service of Korea, is exactly going this route. Although having a straightforward monopoly on messenger services in the country, it has failed to find a sustainable business model in the past. However, five years ago they launched a service called KakaoPay [1], which lets you send money across KakaoTalk friends right in the app. And quite recently it launched its own bank called KakaoBank [2], and is nowadays even issuing debit cards. I expect many social network companies to move in similar directions; once you have a monopoly on communications, network effects are too strong to ignore.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadThat's not believable, but I think it was meant as a believable motivation that could be told to people to make them feel like they understood Facebook's motivation.
It feels like when FB told everyone that they would never data mine whatsapp, and then started mining like 18 months after acquisition.
See also: VR.
The US government is, though, and the Fed is managed by and subject to the government.
My democratic involvement doesn't begin and end at the vote. I'm a participant in the culture that collectively makes these decisions. I feel that I'm a part of "our" decision on most matters, even if I sometimes don't like our collective choice. I expect that my fellow citizen is reasonably competent and in good intention.
Seems like Americans have a very low opinion of their "collective" and are simultaneously fearful of its power over them. If that's more generally true in USA than elsewhere, then I wonder if it's just a product of the country's size, or if people can feel differently about this regarding their state vs. country.
In addition, though the Congress sets the goals for monetary policy, decisions of the Board--and the Fed's monetary policy-setting body, the Federal Open Market Committee--about how to reach those goals do not require approval by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm
It seems like Facebook is worse in both directions. Both serving the interests of activist regulations and governed by a corporation with it's own interests first.
Actually that happens all the time; for example we have store credit, loyalty points, virtual "gold" in games, poker chips, and a long list of community currencies[1] like BerkShares.
Why wouldn't companies or individuals be able to create their own currencies? In the end it just means people are discussing and reaching consensus on the ownership and value of some common unit of account, which is a direct expression of the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of association, and ownership of property. (And by "property" I'm referring only to what is being bought or sold, not the currency itself, which in the case of virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies might not even be property, just pure information about a completely theoretical system which people happen to agree on, which is 100% a matter of speech.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_i...
I guess that depends on how you define managing. I mean, the Fed couldn't do exactly whatever they wanted, the government would step in if it got too crazy.
But on the other hand, separating the government from the central bank is a fundamental idea in the whole central banking argument.
If it indeed was completely managed by and subjected to the full political influence of the government the US would probably have higher denomination bills [0].
[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zimbabwe_$100_trilli...
The Fed has clear interest and motivation to have priorities in line with the country.
Facebook absolutely does not.
What happens when Facebook goes under and private capital bleeds it dry? (cough Toys R Us). I don't think Bain Capital's monetary policy would be good for us.
The Board of Governors are government employees appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate; the Fed is as much part of the government as any of the other “independent” executive board/commissions/agencies.
My point was more that colechristensen's "appeal to democracy" seemed somewhat misguided. Both the Fed and the Supreme Court seems like the least "democratic" government institutions, in some sense. Not that it's bad, nor that I think that FB would be a better guardian of our money supply, but still.
There's no dichotomy there, but straightforward transfer of soverenty to a corporation.
This comment may contain unrestrained cynism.
The government could choose to tax in gold, bitcoin, a foreign currency, or whatever.
There does not need to be a "government money monopoly" to have taxation and a government.
If a government only accepts taxes in gold, then it is still demonstrating it has a monopoly on currency, because now gold becomes something everyone must own and thus will serve as a commonly accepted means of exchange for all those subject to taxation from the same government.
EDIT: For example, Ecuador uses the US Dollar, but don't be fooled to think the Ecuadorian government doesn't have a monopoly on the use of the dollar within Ecuador.
I actually don't know of a government that has a money monopoly. That would mean making a government-controlled currency the exclusive legal currency in the country.
If you don't agree with that definition of the word "monopoly," that's fine, but I don't want to discuss it. It's a word that has a valid meaning but is most commonly used in a way that is self-contradicting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This article uses them interchangably, and does not seem to distinct between the two.
Edit: Looking more closely --
"That means that even though Facebook might not know how much money is in someone’s Calibra wallet or their other transactions [...]"
It seems that Calibra is the name of the 'wallet', and Libra is the name of the 'coin' itself.
Libra = currency itself
Watching some of those Senate hearings is like a trial organized by superstitious villagers. Libra is just a company scrip, like poker chips, which happens to be facilitated by a distributed ledger. I don't use Facebook because it is an abomination, but given the trend toward de-dollarization, the return of currency baskets and reserves made of special drawing rights, and effective negative interest rate policies, Libra may be the last best hope of the US to maintain its current level of influence in the international currency market. Only thing I recommend is that the company should just change it's name to Statebook.
Sorry- what's the connection here? Libra will apparently be a basket of different major currencies, how does this benefit the US specifically? I say this as someone who would like to preserve dollar hegemony, I just don't see the connection
If you’re using a credit card as source payment, you get a bank to protect your purchase and presumably some points or rebate?
I understand cryptocurrency as potential replacement to wire transfers and cash payments. But as a consumer friendly choice, why would somebody choose to pay with crypto over NFC pay (with banks promising purchase protection when coupled with credit card)?
Social network payments will be a "radical monopoly," and the ability to manipulate exchange rates on that platform gives absolute power over import/export prices. Probably not something you want to yield.
Once you accept that senate hearings are more political posturing than an actual trial, they make more sense.
The output of a senate hearing is not a guilty/not-guilty verdict or a vote or a decision, but soundbites and video clips that a politician can use for their next re-election campaign to demonstrate that they care about their constituents and are tough on the boogeyman of the year.
Just do a search for "Senator X destroys Y for Z" - e.g. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10156919959142908 or https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1085637715998195717 (not to pick on a single politician or company - these were just the first few I found)
As if Libra was an Arizona issue only.
"Better oversight" could just mean better oversight from facebook and affiliates. I fail to see the advantage.
I agree about the negative interests rates. Currencies like Dollar and Euro provide cash, but they are essentially configured to speed up consumption. So in that regard they are not sustainable.
And of course, they'll get consent with a small EULA update to their existing users, knowing they won't read it.
Take xbox live's original currency (still in use) where you pay $X for Y coin. They had your money in the bank, while you had some coins in your account, just sitting there, doing nothing for you. They had a bit more control and you could only buy amounts of coin that were not equal to the amount of coin you had to spend to buy anything, so you always had some left in your account.
In Facebook's case, just the time it takes to convert money to Libra and then back into actual money will net them some interest on it. On such a large scale, that's a constant income.
They're trying to be a non-profit because they don't actually charge for the service, but the investors still make money by way of holding on to your cash while it's in Libra form.
A not-for-profit can charge for service, and cannot return a profit to investors. Maybe they've ways to wiggle around the latter, but not charging for the service is simply irrelevant.
Oh, and they had fire dancers, an open bar, and taxi reimbursement.
10/10 would Christmas party again.
Compensation of employees of a not-for-profit is certainly allowed - that's a different thing than returning profit to shareholders except when it isn't (in which case, IIUC, it comes with restrictions, which isn't to say it's never abused, which isn't to say it's never/always prosecuted, etc, etc...).
I explicitly admitted the possibility of wiggle room around the restrictions - my point was about what the restrictions referred to in the first place.
Someone earning dollars in the US, can send libra to their folks in Ukraine, and they can spend them without conversion fees.
The open market faction in the US would love to see those trade barriers lowered. Money is expensive to move.
From an ofac perspective, an immutable ledger would allow investigators to trace the funds. Small time criminals use venmo already.
USD as a world currency. I really can’t imagine libra being anything else but an extension of USD.
While the immutable ledger is nice, it isn't new, nor does it change the game at all. To be honest, the Libra thing wouldn't be much different at all given the right set of business processes being built around it.
The problem is who is doing it, and what they gain if they are actually allowed to implement those controls. Facebook would have an undisputed goldmine. Full data on every transaction you process through Libra, all your information as collected through integration with services like LexisNexis (which is bloody creepy by the way, even if it is based on public records) plus their already problematic information w.r.t their social network graph.
There is no way that much data collected in one place isn't a societal liability. Period. But no, we're getting reporting that regulators are worried about terrorists. Never mind that private currencies just make auditing and forensic accounting that much more difficult.
"Treasury takes very seriously the role of the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency, and will continue our efforts to protect our country". [1]
Are you supposed to say that out loud?
[1] https://youtu.be/zAICzg8ir50?t=370
The US gains strategic advantage from the power of the USD, and signalling their intention to protect that advantage will only help reinforce it.
I'm confused by most of what you wrote. The rest of the world is looking after their own interests, that's why nearly every country has its own currency. It's why the Euro exists. It's why the Federal Reserve isn't literally the global central bank controlling a single currency that everyone on earth must use. The Eurozone - for one example - is and always has been interested in promoting the Euro as a dollar-competing global currency.
Russia and China, as the primary military competitors to the US (and China as the sole economic superpower competitor to the US), are persistently attempting to either compete with or undermine the US dollar hegemony. Russia hasn't been subtle about wanting to see the dollar's prominence reduced for most of Putin's time in office.
These two statements are contradictory. Ask the ordinary Greeks or Italians if they feel the Euro supports their national interests. The Italians are even talking about rebooting the Lira now.
The USA Ginnie Mae Bond! (GNMA)
For only $25,000, you get a Social Security check.
Just go to ??? it really doesn't matter, work, save, buy one, and quit.
If it fails, you get to tell Marines what to murder, yet alone get your very own Aircraft carrier!
What fun!
You could take the coupon, and value base invest it far far away from the hippy hell known as California.
You leave them alone. They leave you alone.
If you like crypto, just make a video game, and doll out experience.
Worry not about the rich friends in San Fran.
There's behavioral wards right? Those people from the county that come and help out the disadvantaged?
Screw them! Because they are screwing you so so much.
It's also a potential moat for FB to protect its ad business against encroachment by Amazon's own ad business.
They can make a killing on this without needing to touch anyone's data.
Besides, the lions share of FB's current revenue still comes from US Ad spending. Amazon's dominance of e-commerce threatens this because people who want to buy something increasingly just go to Amazon.com. Amazon's ads offer the opportunity to influence consumers at the end of the conversion funnel.
But this means that Amazon will get a bigger slice of both the ad spend and the purchase data which FB doesn't yet have. Their ad business already makes almost $3B a quarter - that's almost 1/5th of FB's revenue. This is money that likely would otherwise have gone to FB/Google, but isn't anymore.
This is big threat to FB's core business in what is their most lucrative market right now. Would they leverage this data to try to keep their ad business competitive? I certainly think so. Just imagine how much stuff an AI that knows your purchases and your social life can get you to buy.
But the largest opportunity for growth is in the emerging world.
(WeChat is very popular for p2p payments, as well as social networking)
We'd just be a nice to have.
If you a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you should vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp, then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. This is precisely why we added that feature.
Or to put it another way, what would be good justification to reconsider our political system? If the answer is nothing then we're just following our system like a religion. We ought to be able to discuss the upsides (there are some pretty great ones) and downsides (everything has tradeoffs).
I disagree with your dismissal of my point, with your saying that " Those are a lot of big conceptual ideas". These are big, but _important_ ideas. Abstract as they may be, they describe tangible concepts that have a lot of importance. "I think at the end of the day people just want to know what will make their lives better" - Yes, therein lies the unfortunate complexity of politics. As I said in my original post ( way up there ), I don't defend democracy because I believe that it best serves me ( I've felt for a long time that it serves other people's needs far better than mine ). I defend it because it's the best system I'm aware of for egalitarianism at scale.
Put like this it will start making sense to the institutions. Just give them some time to digest it.
Suddenly they can make money from their users directly, rather than from selling their users to advertising customers.
I think Apple should investigate doing the same; make it so you can have an iBankAccount, and use phones to transfer money and pay etc using Apple as a bank. Apple could beat Facebook at this. And with Tim Cook at the helm, we might actually trust them more than Facebook and the current crop of actual banks.
The thing I don't get is the 'crypto' part of the currency; why that? Why not just become FaceBank and do it the old fashioned way?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KakaoTalk
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KakaoPay
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KakaoBank