| > I think governments actually want Libra Which governments? Libra doesn’t benefit any government. While Libra is a “real” cryptocurrency (distributed, any user can exchange, etc) as opposed to schemes like Beenz, it’s closer to company scrip than to Bitcoin’s model of “digital gold”. Also - despite all the white-papers and hired evangelists - Facebook would still de-facto control Libra: not directly, of course - but they’d control the specification and the reference implementation - which means they’d control the consensus system that underpins distributed cryptocurrencies - so if they want to switch to adopting a proof-of-stake system (i.e. good for whales and hoarders) or intentionally introducing a backdoor’d cryptography scheme - or even adding address blacklisting. That last part is probably the most important: I imagine most governments (especially western ones) really want address blacklisting: it provides a Libra with an equivalent of today’s bank account seizures - and it’s easy to ask for: you don’t want to be seen allowing terrorists, money-launderers and CP porn sellers to keep hold of their money. Finally, Facebook does not have a substantial corporate presence in every country - which means that governments without the ability to sue or prosecute FB for malfeasance probably /don’t/ want to endorse anything FB does. |