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Comment by CodiePetersen | Hacker News Reader

I think this coin is a really bad idea. Its just centralizing a crypto coin and then removing the laws around money because now a dollar has a libra coin wrapper on it so it's obviously totally different than a dollar.

It feels like a federal reserve moment where a bunch of rich folk get together and again dictate the future of currency. Crypto was supposed to change that trend. Unfortunately the want of convenience will probably win out over any sort moralistic/idealistic standing and unless government steps in, it will probably be widely adopted.

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Good luck with regulators. Especially regulators in the financial industry.

I don't really think that creating a Facebook account is satisfactory to cover KYC(1) and AML(2) rules, as a for example.

But they're many other examples in finance where the "better ask forgiveness than permission" will get you a go straight to jail, don't collect 200 libra on your way there card if violated.

(1) Know Your Customer

(2) Anti Money Laundring

Can you provide an example of a person in the financial industry who went to jail for violating regulations of the kind you are talking about, as opposed to fraud/dishonesty?

Raj Rajaratnam[1] would be a fine example. He got 11 years for insider trading.

There's also Matthias Krull[2]. Sentenced to ten years for money laundring.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Rajaratnam

[2] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/criminal-conviction_former-swis...

I think that it would be more accurate to describe "14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud" and "a plot to launder $1.2 billion from Venezuela's state-owned oil company" as fraud and dishonesty, rather than regulatory violations.

It's not pegged to a dollar. It's pegged to a blend of currencies and assets. So it's not a dollar wrapped like Tether or USDC.

I don't understand how they plan to make it work across jurisdictions. There are so many laws and rules when it comes to transmitting and storing money or derivatives.

Like I can transfer a billion dollars worth of BTC, no problem. But if I try to wire even $100K between two of my accounts in US and EU, all kinds of red flags go off and phone calls need to happen.

They plan to ignore regulations and grow quick enough so that they are too big to fail and thus too big to regulate.

If you made this proposition to me a year ago, I would probably shrug it off. But after having read about several successful companies from the late 90s and early 00s doing exactly this – PayPal being a prime example – I think you may very well be right. Heck, one could even say that the current legal/lobbying fights between the internet giants and major states is exactly this.

I think the point is to call their little consortium "decentralized" and let the various on-ramps (be it wallets, exchanges, merchants) deal with AML, just as if it were cash or Bitcoin.

This is apparent in how their wallet Calibra is what requires KYC, not the crypto token itself.

It's so strange, I'm pretty sure they admit the whole thing is not decentralized.

Many countries treat BTC as foreign currency, with all the regulations that come with that. It's not a major issue for the bitcoin community, since apart from taxes and money laundring protections you can mostly circumvent it by avoiding those jurisdictions as required. But Facebook/Libra would likely feel the full force of those regulations.

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