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Comment by Mengkudulangsat | Hacker News Reader

I'll be honest, I'm excited.

The biggest hurdle to Bitcoin adoption are on-ramps / off-ramps. Businesses and individuals dealing with Bitcoin frequently get de-risked by banks and suppressed by regulators (e.g: China & India).

Libra if (a) can be interacted with via API, (b) can itself be acquired via bank transfers / credit cards & (c) not geo-fenced, will eventually be adapted into one of the many exchanges and will contribute greatly to solving Bitcoin's on-ramping issues.

Whether consumers want Bitcoin once they've tasted Libra, well that's an ideological choice. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

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Why would anyone want a facebook coin that is completely controlled by Facebook which can be controlled by the government when with Bitcoin you get complete sovereignty?

Nobody but it doesnt mattet. Facebook has the potential to br the western wechat with this.

Micropayments.

Lightning Network

Because not everyone cares about "complete sovereignty"? There's a reason why all these companies are still successful, most people don't care that much about their privacy or other dignities if it means convenience.

Then I see no difference from USD. What exactly is the point? Yet another payment method?

Facebook is trying to create a common currency accessible to a global userbase whose transmission bypasses traditional banking rails. It'll be super convenient, even the USD can't do that.

This combined with Whatsapp for Business is going to be game changing for SMEs in developing markets.

Do I want to keep my savings in it? Probably not...

You mean like Paypal?

It might be a great project, it just has very little to do with actual cryptocurrencies. It's great to be excited about it, the issue many people in this thread have the project being called a cryptocurrency.

Your ruler cares about sovereignty.

If your national government cares at all about sovereignty, it will force you to use bitcoin by rule of law / force. Countries like Venezuela, Turkey, and Argentina with struggling currencies are under the mercy of the US petrodollar. A move to BTC would end their hyper inflation.

Most people are too self centered to realize the political/ economical implications of BTC. The most likely case will be that nothing changes in our day to day, except that our currency is now backed by BTC instead of US debt.

If this coin can be traded freely on crypto exchanges, then it will provide a convienient on/off ramp for other cryptocurrencies.

I don't see Facebook allowing that. This is going to be a locked-down, siloed currency that can only be purchased with a Facebook account and real currency, with the consortium members taking a cut.

Because you want to be able to actually buy stuff other than drugs with it?

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