Hacker News Reader

Comment by justinzollars | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually kind of bummed out about this. I may not like FB, but I like the idea of a digital currency backed by a floating basket of currencies.

View on HN

> a digital currency backed by a floating basket of currencies

This will be live by the end of 2019 in a similar form.

The MakerDAO stablecoin system on the Ethereum blockchain produces the DAI stablecoin, with 1 DAI pegged at 1 USD. There's currently $85M of DAI in circulation.

Each $1 of DAI is backed with $1.50 of Ether, the currency of the Ethereum blockchain.

Later this year a major upgrade will go live named "MakerDAO multi-collateral DAI". The "multi-collateral" bit is related to a basket of currencies.

By Q1 2020, the DAI stablecoin will be backed still by ETH, but also backed by USDC (a US dollar stablecoin run by Coinbase), REP (a token for the Augur decentralized prediction market), and other tokens.

Not exactly "a digital currency backed by a floating basket of currencies" but a related concept and in production very soon :-)

https://mkr.tools https://vote.makerdao.com https://makerdao.com

I’ve always found it very interesting. Do you have a good resource that explains how it really work?

This is probably your best bet: https://makerdao.com/en/whitepaper

There were a few cryptos that tried the exact same thing before Maker. Notably NuBits and BitShares, both of who had dollar equivalents with what was at the time more collateral in their native crypto than the dollar peg. In all instances at some point the collateral value collapsed and the whole thing went kaput (more or less at once).

That said I have high respect for the Maker team and the overall idea. They are some of the best people working in crypto right now.

Not one that isn't regulated and that is controlled by a company with a penchant for walking the legal gray area line.

Agree, Facebook is a malicious actor. They are a surveillance and propaganda platform. I don’t want them controlling a currency as they’d likely just abuse it.

A lack of regulation is a bit of the draw, isn't it?

Let's not pretend any of the processors are doing this because they have ethical issues with Facebook. They are likely doing it at the behest of the Fed, the Treasury and other international currencies. It's about power.

Let's remind ourselves that the entire point of the Calibra organization from which these companies have withdrawn their applications is to decentralize the governance of the coin.

Facebook would not have unilateral control by any stretch of the imagination.

Calibra = Facebook's Libra wallet subsidiary

Libra Association is the organization these companies have withdrawn from.

>Facebook would not have unilateral control by any stretch of the imagination.

At minimum they are the registered owner the Libra federal trademarks...that's a funny first step for a "decentralized" project. Satoshi Nakamoto never trademarked bitcoin or blockchain for that matter.

Not only the legal gray line, but also the equally important moral gray line. Good riddance.

Devil's advocate: Pretty much every fiat currency out there is also backed by an entity with an ethical checkered past. That's one of the major political motivations behind cryptocurrencies.

So why repeat the same failures? IMO one of the promises of cryptocurrency was a federalized system where it was owned by the people, not a single entity. No matter the marketing, if Facebook is making a cryptocurrency it will have the opportunity to abuse it and change the rules whenever they want. I'd much prefer a foundation made of a group of industry, political, and technical experts that can at least pretend to be impartial.

Except countries have an existential interest in ensuring their citizens are, to a certain degree, well off. Facebook has no such incentive or interest or even responsibility.

Better than one regulated and controlled by USGOV. An entity with so many evil acts in its past and present it's a meme.

I'm actually quite relieved about this. I don't know who I want to control such a thing, but it sure as hell isn't Facebook (or Google, Amazon, MS, Apple for that matter).

I think what it'll take is a company with a profit (i.e. subscription/fee) model that clearly doesn't rely on pimping out consumer data to any/all comers and takes GDPR privacy to heart.

What about Apple's profit model involves pimping out consumer data to any/all comers?

Then let’s have the central banks of the G7 set up a cryptocurrency that’s backed by actual reserve currency. Why put Facebook in the middle?

If the central banks of the G7 are the authority, then why bother with any crypto nonsense? You've just described the Euro, more or less. No need to burn any electricity on a proof of work & public ledger system.

This was partly my point.

I am overjoyed. Because now a truly open and decentralized solution has a chance instead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com