What Facebook’s new currency means for the banking system

He probably meant that merchant would see your FB profile and all the associated data.

Meanwhile when you pay with a credit card, merchant has access to very little data.

Apple Pay enables anonymous spending iirc

You can pay cash for a prepaid Visa debit card.

There are also various cryptocurrency backed cards which offer varying levels of anonymity.

So for (1), not appealing for anyone currently interested in the one killer app for cryptocurrencies.

For (2), I look at it this way: A swimming pool can be 99% pure water, but if it's 1% poop I don't want to dip my feet in it.

As for (3), Visa can do something like 250k transactions per second. The blockchain aspect of this system unnecessarily hobbles it, and it seems like really the blockchain aspect just tacks on a techy buzzword that offers no compelling features that a purely centralized database can't do better.

Ain't gonna touch on your 1st and last points because I don't know enough about that.

Regarding your second point, of course they're gonna abstract it. There's no way in hell people would trust it if it were labeled as Facebook Libra. The only way for it to get any momentum is by people being tricked into thinking it's some sort of an independent entity that happens to be supported by Facebook and others.

I don't buy it, and neither should anyone else. Even if they make just 5% of the profit that Libra generates... somehow, that's still 5% more than Facebook would receive otherwise. It ain't even released yet, and I already know that I'll go out of my way to avoid ever touching it. I assume most of HN readers will do the same.

It is an overall net positive. Just imagine if you live in a country with unstable currency/government. Libra might allow you to protect yourself and allow you to continue surviving (by being able to trade or buy stuff from abroad). Think Venezuela. Only problem is if you don't have a cell phone, internet or electricity.

While it obviously hasn’t taken off as a mainstream currency, it certainly entered the mainstream mindshare. And even if it is known for illicit purchases, it’s by no means useless for legitimate purchases. The best use case now is for privacy, which I suppose is misleading since it may lead folks to falsely believe that use of cryptocurrency alone makes them anonymous. Even still, there’s hardly any alternative for that use case. I use it to pay for VPNs just as a matter of principle.

Reality: I think cryptocurrency is worse for illicit purchases than many realize and simultaneously better for legitimate purchases than many realize. Pseudonymity is more useful for average users than full anonymity.

Hard to really know for sure what dominates the volume, but based on folks I know with large amounts of Bitcoin, I’d actually guess its been mostly investing for a long time.

That said, I never store value in any crypto, but I do think it is underrated for more legitimate use cases.

That's the problem -- it hasn't really caught on yet. But Libra could be so ubiquitous and convenient, it could catch on, before Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that creates a blocker for more adoption of those things.

But real cryptocurrencies can become popular -- they just need to scale and attach themselves to something that is convenient and popular. That could happen with lots of things, for example Status IM and Ethereum. Or Lightning Networks and some WebRTC sex chat site.

But if Libra gets in there before those other things take off, it could be lights out for digital cash.

It’s becoming clear that cryptocurrency is a real threat to major incumbents, and the reason corporations have signed on to Libra is to placate their shareholders who are asking them for a blockchain play.

The benefits of digital assets are obviously better than old-school pen and paper assets. The same arguments against the internet are being applied to blockchain, and blockchain is going to win just as the internet won.

Fiat currency inflates and is subject to the whims of government. Cryptocurrencies are managed by code. I prefer the code, and I imagine citizens of countries like Venezuela and Turkey would also prefer code over their corrupt governments.

> It hasn't caught on in the mainstream at all

The value of bitcoin has risen well over 100% for each year of it's existence.

I'd be shocked to find a person in the western world who hasn't heard of the name at least, while plenty of people I know haven't the slightest clue about slack, atlassian, etc.

They should be playing this clip on Bloomberg TV. It explains it better than all of the BS they have been shoveling.

If it's pegged to multiple currencies, wouldn't that mean it's not stable against any currency?