Facebook's Libra Cryptocurrency Project Has Failed in its Current Form, says Swiss President (cnbc.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes Reuters' reports on some more bad news for the Geneva-based Libra Association:
Facebook's Libra project has failed in its current form and needs reworking to be approved, said the president of Switzerland where the cryptocurrency is seeking regulatory consent. "I don't think (Libra has a chance in its current form), because central banks will not accept the basket of currencies underpinning it," Ueli Maurer, who is Switzerland's finance minister and outgoing president, told Swiss broadcaster SRF.
"The project, in this form, has thus failed," he added in an interview.
Libra did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"The project, in this form, has thus failed," he added in an interview.
Libra did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Can it ever succeed? (Score:3, Insightful)
They lost me at "facebook".
Only Bitcoin matters (Score:1, Insightful)
https://medium.com/@jimmysong/... [medium.com]
https://www.whatbitcoindid.com... [whatbitcoindid.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitco... [reddit.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why?
Bitcoin's technologically lacking in a few ways.
Monero's signficantly better from a privacy point of view; and is more resistant to ASCI mining.
I'm all for people creating technologically better cryptocurrencies.
But totally agree Libra's not one of them.
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In the specific case of Monero. Monero can't scale at the the Bitcoin level, the transaction size is too huge. The value of Bitcoin is a consequence of the scarcity of Bitcoin. Monero was found to be too buggy, and too experimental to be taken seriously on the scarcity side. If you look at the exchanges, you will find out, that nobody uses Monero.
ASIC resistance is absurd. If you know the Altcoins world, this is where the scammers thrive. As explained by Jimmy Song everyt
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Technically no one uses bitcoin either, as a currency. Only as a vehicle for speculation and money laundering.
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You just have to look at the Gresham's law (bad money drives out good), and you will find out why you will never use something like Bitcoin first, as a medium of exchange.
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Bitcoin does not scale, In fact it is pretty much already extremely sluggish at the current, relatively low transaction numbers. It will grind to a halt if it ever becomes stable enough again to have any use as a currency. I doubt that will happen. The only thing keeping alive is those with Bitcoins hoping they can scam enough others into it to get rid of their bad investment. The "greater fool" theory these people follow does need those other greater fools after all.
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As explained above, the decentralization is very important, and can't be undermined. Without decentralization the whole system is just a classical database managed by a few people => useless and worthless (as a better Gold).
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Nope. The decentralized design of Bitcoin is defective in a way that prevents it from scaling. Of course, decentralized databases can scale, but you need to design them right.
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We must go back to basics here. The Bitcoin's blocksize is limited, so the data you can insert every day is capped. This is not an issue, we have the same relationship between Central Banks and banks. A Central Bank (Bitcoin) doesn't have to record every transaction a Bank generates. Bitcoin plays the same role as a Central Bank, and a software layer, like Lightning, the same role as a Bank.
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a) Bitcoin is far, far worse than gold in any aspect except physical storage size. The comparison is so mismatched that it is utterly ludicrous.
b) Killing Bitcoin is easy: Just outlaw Bitcoin possession and then go after all that operate miners, which is blatantly obvious on network layer.
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The Gold Standard was killed https://medium.com/@festina_le... [medium.com] The Gold Standard requires to trust a third party, until the third party can't be trusted anymore (1971).
b) China/India did it. Is Bitcoin killed? No. A Coun
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Well, if you are _stupid_, your arguments make sense. If not, they are so obviously contrived and wrong, it is staggering.
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Bitcoin is where all the real work takes place. Bitcoin is not a software, Bitcoin is a technology. Bitcoin is the scarcity technology. The same scarcity defined for a commodity like Gold.
There is no point in adding random software, or software compatible with databases. Theses software have no value by themselves. And add nothing to the whole system. You can't generalize the concept to databases without breaking the incentives. Without the incentives the system is equivalent to a standard database, and will be centralized.
Again.
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We must stop with the word: cryptocurrency. This word is meaningless, decentralization, in this field, was a one-time event. Everything begins with Bitcoin and end with Bitcoin.
https://medium.com/@jimmysong/... [medium.com]
https://www.whatbitcoindid.com... [whatbitcoindid.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitco... [reddit.com]
This text is important.
No more need for Libra (Score:2)
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Swiss President (Score:3)
What's he got to do with anything?
(Aren't a lot of European Heads-of-State just ceremonial, non political figureheads?)
Re:Swiss President (Score:4, Informative)
In Switzerland the President has only ceremonial functions, but the role is taken in turns by one of the 7 members of the Federal Council which are the equivalent of ministers.
Ueli Maurer is President, but also at the head of the Federal Department of Finance, so he's basically Minister of Finance and likely giving the declaration about the cryptocurrency under that role.
Re: Swiss President (Score:2)
Yes and no. In parliamentary monarchies - for example - the monarch is the head of state and the one responsible for taking part in pageantry, while the prime minister is a government functionary and the one responsible for the daily functioning of government. While the PM might take part in some ceremonies, their role is not ceremonial in the sense of a monarch's.
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Not in Switzerland. This guy is the finance minister as well (the presidency rotates among the ministers) and he was actually speaking as that.
Re: LET'S BAN ALL CRYPTOCURRENCIES GLOBALLY ASAP!! (Score:3)
There's no law against issuing your own currency. States have been known to do it, and local business groups continue to do so. Currency is just anything people accept as a fungible means of exchange (like SIM card minutes being used as a currency in Africa).
Where many (shutdown) currencies run into trouble is around fraud or the exchange of the alternate currency for dollars or being used an unregulated security. Essentially, those currencies are being used to commit other crimes, and because centralized c
The Facebook Arcology (Score:1)
I'm beginning to think that Zuck (which rhymes with 'yuck!', by the way) is a megalomaniac-in-progress.
Remember that episode of The Orville where they visited that planet where 'social media' met a turboed-on-steroids version of Chinas' 'social credit score'? Their entire society was run by 'social media', to the point where the 'court of public opinion' could get you detained and put to death.
Is that what Zuck wants to do? Turn Earth into Planet Zuck? Zuckworl
Hey Zuck (Score:2)
How's that grand plan to rule the world working out eh?
The sooner Facebook and the like are closed down the better for humanity.
Err... (Score:2)
If your cryptocurrency needs to be "approved" by existing central banks, you failed before even getting started.
Where it failed (Score:1)
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Facebook cryptocurrency (Score:1)