Hacker News Reader

Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Any new system will necessarily have better oversight than the one that has co-evolved in a murky organic soup with cash and foreign exchange. Even bitcoin has more transparency than the majority of transactions today.

Watching some of those Senate hearings is like a trial organized by superstitious villagers. Libra is just a company scrip, like poker chips, which happens to be facilitated by a distributed ledger. I don't use Facebook because it is an abomination, but given the trend toward de-dollarization, the return of currency baskets and reserves made of special drawing rights, and effective negative interest rate policies, Libra may be the last best hope of the US to maintain its current level of influence in the international currency market. Only thing I recommend is that the company should just change it's name to Statebook.

View on HN

>> Watching some of those Senate hearings is like a trial organized by superstitious villagers

Once you accept that senate hearings are more political posturing than an actual trial, they make more sense.

The output of a senate hearing is not a guilty/not-guilty verdict or a vote or a decision, but soundbites and video clips that a politician can use for their next re-election campaign to demonstrate that they care about their constituents and are tough on the boogeyman of the year.

Just do a search for "Senator X destroys Y for Z" - e.g. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10156919959142908 or https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1085637715998195717 (not to pick on a single politician or company - these were just the first few I found)

agree. It was pretty weird to hear that politician repeating "Arizona constituents" in every sentence.

As if Libra was an Arizona issue only.

> Libra may be the last best hope of the US to maintain its current level of influence in the international currency market

Sorry- what's the connection here? Libra will apparently be a basket of different major currencies, how does this benefit the US specifically? I say this as someone who would like to preserve dollar hegemony, I just don't see the connection

If the US doesn't take a lead in the fintech race China will take over the world. Imagine everyone in Africa, S.E. Asia, etc using Alipay. This takes away power from the US in control and de-dollarization.

You raised an interesting point about Alipay. But I’ve had equally fast transactions with Apple Pay/Android Pay. Why not double down on NFC payment options coupled with desktop devices instead of building an Alipay alternative?

If you’re using a credit card as source payment, you get a bank to protect your purchase and presumably some points or rebate?

I understand cryptocurrency as potential replacement to wire transfers and cash payments. But as a consumer friendly choice, why would somebody choose to pay with crypto over NFC pay (with banks promising purchase protection when coupled with credit card)?

You can't use Apple Pay on top of a bank account that doesn't exist. 1.7b of the people in emerging markets don't have access to banking services. 500m+ of them have internet/cells and many have Facebook/WhatsApp. Hence Facebook's interest.

you, and I, represent a small fraction of the total addressa ble market. A huge chunk of the world does not have access to credit cards.

Even though Libra will be HQ'd in Switzerland, FB control means US and State Dept. control by extension. If a Chinese company dominates payments for the unbanked, the dollar and SWIFT partners hegemony ends and that lever is much weaker.

Social network payments will be a "radical monopoly," and the ability to manipulate exchange rates on that platform gives absolute power over import/export prices. Probably not something you want to yield.

But in the end cash does provide benefits to me that libra doesn't. I am probably not the target group, but evidently this murky, organic soup can indeed net advantages.

"Better oversight" could just mean better oversight from facebook and affiliates. I fail to see the advantage.

I agree about the negative interests rates. Currencies like Dollar and Euro provide cash, but they are essentially configured to speed up consumption. So in that regard they are not sustainable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com