Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Assossa 2213 days ago
If anyone is wondering why this is a big deal, let me explain. All major payment systems currently (PayPal, Venmo, FB Messenger, etc) are still based on government currencies. Libra is different as it is a cryptocurrency, so no government can easily control it. This might seem fine since everyone likes Bitcoin and such, but those cryptocurrencies are controlled by the community, not by a central organization. Libra is controlled by a group of major corporations and organizations, not by the community. Meaning that if those corporations decide to do something with the currency, no person or government could stop them.

That might not sound too bad. They own platform, so they should be able to control it, right? However, you need to consider that if someone controls the economy of a country, they control the government of that country as well. They would be able to control inflation and therefore the boom/bust cycle. If Libra is used by the majority of citizens and businesses in a country, then the group of corporations ruling Libra will be able to manipulate that country's government to do their bidding. I imagine countries with unstable governments will be the first heavy adopters of Libra and those governments are the easiest to manipulate. Libra could spawn the age of global corporatism.

Libra may turn out fine and improve the world, but that is only if its administration remains uncorrupted. Take a look through the list of entities that have joint control of Libra. I doubt you would trust most of them to control the world economy.

But this is the exact reason that Libra is controlled by a diverse group of organizations, right? I don't believe that's going to have much effect. Facebook and similar corporations already bully smaller businesses and organizations, so what prevents them from bullying or deceiving the smaller organizations in the Libra Association to vote for manipulative changes?

4 comments

Any crypto-currency that is not controlled by the community using it is a red flag by definition in my book. It defeats the purpose of a crypto-currency and opens you up to a lot of risk, which is unacceptable for any financial solution.
China has around 65% of the total hashing power, so technically they control it: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/50274/chinese-bitcoin-mi...
"It"?
Who is more important, a small unstable government, or the citizens of the country they govern? I feel like if people are switching from their country's currency to Libra, then that country has proven they shouldn't be in control of their currency in the first place.
Very true, but the point is that Libra has the potential of being just as corrupt as an unstable government. The country should switch to a cryptocurrency that can't be controlled, not one controlled by corporations.
> However, you need to consider that if someone controls the economy of a country, they control the government of that country as well.

What do you mean? the FED is just a bunch of private institutions, and they don't control the US government.

Libra is not a cryptocurrency.

It's a centralized payment processor owned by a group of banks.

It's no different from any other company store scrip.

Depends on your definition of a cryptocurrency. Libra is a blockchain distributed across multiple separate entities. That fits the definition of a cryptocurrency for most people. If your definition of a cryptocurrency requires community control, then no, it's not a cryptocurrency.
It's a distributed ledger "distributed" among a permission group of owners.

The real test is if you can just replace it with a database is it still relevant? In this case, you change nothing by just removing the "blockchain" and replacing it with a database server. Same thing with XRP, it's not distributed consensus in any meaningful way and thus is not a cryptocurrency by any accepted definition.