It's not that I think the Libra product is going to be fantastic per se. I just think that competition will force all the companies to make their products better. I don't want the government to prevent companies from making products, I want to be able to choose of my own free will whether it's a good product or not.

My difficulty is, at heart, I don't want my tokens of exchange to be a product at all. I want the guarantee of universality that comes with money. Accessible to rich and poor alike, good credit or bad. Anything that tries to edge that out via the market is inherently a bad thing. Ultimately for all except stockholders. A central bank backed cryptocurrency with all the traits of universality and legal tender may be a better bet...

I am fully in favour of the various new banking services and apps that are springing up, services to manage, transfer, save and invest better etc. That's an appropriate place for the market. Even there it's needed regulation to ensure the most marginal in society can get a basic bank account, or not get stiffed on fees.

Then choose "the better product" among the myriad of banking accounts from the myriad of competing banks out there. Your problems are all problems related to bank accounts, not to the currency that gets stored in those accounts, so there is no reason at all to cry for competition on the currency level.

Pretty much my feeling.

I can never tell when discussing matters like this if the other party is expressing legitimate concerns poorly considered, or if I’m witnessing some astroturfing campaign.

JBoss was the first astroturfing campaign I learned about (and if you’re reading this, Marc, fuck you. Yeah people still remember.)

I know these sorts of things have been going on forever but it feels like it’s getting worse over time. To the point I’m not sure I know who to believe anymore.

GP is the founder of parse, acquired by Facebook. I’d imagine he has a nice chunk of FB stock :).

While there are not many Facebooks, there are thousands of cryptocurrencies. As long as Libra is exchangeable , i dont see how they can maintain a stronghold on their users and manipulate them. It's not as if the entire world has adopted libra, its going to be a long drawn and selective process in which businesses decide which cryptocurrencies to support. People don't change their friend's networks, but they re not equally selective with money, they 'll use whats convenient and good.But Libra is probably going to be the biggest onramp of them .

Size matters, particularly when it's a multinational behemoth with a strong track record of manipulating their users. Thank heavens regulators appear as disturbed as I am with the idea.

Here's the issue, well my issue. I've read more than enough history to know what happens with company currency or scrip. It doesn't have to be the mining town paying the miner in mining dollars to use at a variable rate solely at the overpriced mining store, valid only whilst they work at the mine and don't upset the foreman or his wife. Each step and use gave opportunity, gladly taken, for the mine to extract more profit.

Currency regulators permit local dollars and pounds which are an attempt to keep money in a local economy. Their constraint is fair to both the public and the market, they are purely parallel to cash, and they are tiny enough not to matter - crucially there is no profit in and of themselves. A "local California dollar" might well deservedly get a different reaction.

With Libra, well it's not hard to create a Company Scrip 2.0 scenario. In fact it's disturbingly easy. Actually, to imagine dozens upon dozens of them. Then a few dozen more purely because it's supra-national. Then a few dozen more because they are large enough to squeeze out cash without needing to be a remote company town. Yeah actually I want regulators to squish that before birth, with extreme malice.

Just one example: Facebook and Ford do a deal for FB advertising and a bit of personal data swapping, in return for Ford F150s, or maybe just a particular model to start, solely being available for Libra. You want that Ford truck, well convert some dollars into Libra. You don't see how it's disturbingly easy to create an inevitable and easily manipulated stronghold down that route? What about if the local supermarket does the same deal? Breach the licence, well you're not shopping in these stores... Even stealing universal currencies, such as dollars, does not remove your future use of or right to use dollars. Only the stolen loot is taken from you.

I'm perfectly comfortable with the anarchistic cryptocurrencies such as BTC as there is no threat to the universality of exchange, even if it did take off more than BTC yet has. Even though BTC's main use seems as medium of speculation until the bubble bursts. They can reasonably be a currency. Libra feels more universality of control than of exchange.

A currency as product - that's inherently a bad thing, as I wrote in my other reply. Even if the company is not Facebook but is behind the crypto currency alone, with a built in route to profit just by the "currency" existing. That's diametrically opposed to the needs of a currency - a universal token of exchange and legal tender. It rather removes the ability to be a currency. It should not be a product in and of itself. I expect, and pray, that regulators will erase any that have chance of becoming widespread enough to be real alternative currency beyond speculative toy. Otherwise everyone except shareholders is worse off. Now a central bank backing a cryptocurrency - held as universal and legal tender - that's an entirely different, and interesting thing.

Unlike FB friends, which is a strong moat for facebook, exchanging cryptocurrencies is trivially easy. I don't use facebook but i 'd use libra considering that it opens up a huge audience the same way way mastercard does. And in that respect, FB would have to compete with mastercard and visa for user payment data, which (should be) a well regulated realm.

> that's diametrically opposed to the needs of a currency - a universal token

Currencies dont need to be universal, at least they were not until maybe the gold standard. It's government enforcement that made them look universal, but until then , a currency was of equal holding value as any commodity like gold. That was a good hedge against government misuse imho. And , looking at the manipulation of central govt rates, there is misuse today, worldwide. That doesnt mean the only alternative is FB of course, but it could be one, and i dont see a danger in it being one.

> such as BTC as there is no threat to the universality of exchange

BTC is a direct threat to any government that prints fiat money. It's just too small yet, so your theory gives it a pass.

Mastercard is a financial service for dealing with dollars, pounds, euros etc. Libra is not. To a logical conclusion it wants to be alongside dollars and euros with Mastercard offering a Libracard.

Universality and confidence came long, long before the 19th century gold standard - to the early Middle Ages and beyond, a state, or king, set the purity of coin, the penalty for clipping, mutilating the coin and so on. The gold standard developed from, and long after coinage standard and assaying.

Again in the early ME, particularly during the Viking age, and with some overlap with coin, people used hacksilver and similar as preferred medium of exchange because there was inherent value to the commodity. Hacksilver goes long back into the dim and distant ancient past, beyond other universal coins and currencies that achieved confidence, such as Roman. So yes, it was the ultimate - and very effective - hedge, particularly as towns fell, were raided or found themselves repeatedly changing side.

Of course government can abuse rates, but the scope is amplified orders of magnitude with a Company Scrip. Libra is a company scrip that risks destabilising proper currencies, and creating islands of inclusion and exclusion. By contrast, BTC is not, and does not. The difference in regulatory response seems clear, and warranted.

> to the early Middle Ages and beyond, a state, or king, set the purity of coin, the penalty for clipping

People trusted gold at least as much as their king though, even if the roman emperor or king tried hard to push his coin. The Florin was very popular in europe but florence was a small territory. Taxes were often paid via barter. Silver and gold were not made by any government / even aluminum was once more precious than gold. You can have all of those, because people understand the value of monetary tokens as mediums of exchange, and money doesn't have to be universal. It's only in very recent decades that people have lost all control and voice about their money. With increased coordination, regulation and data exchange between central banks around the world, having choice is what cryptocurrencies bring back.

Quite, and that's why there was an overlap of things like hacksilver that had value by weight of metal, into the periods of currency - or war and turmoil. Confidence in coins of the realm goes back much further than you imply, and had islands of confidence further back, such as during Pax Romana.

Choice is what some cryptocurrencies bring - the anarchistic ones. Even there I see little to no chance of surpassing central bank backed currencies - that's just a pipe dream. Of the corporate backed cryptocurrencies, the "with profit" currencies, they're simply Company Scrip, and an entirely different species apart.

this sums up so many things wrong with capitalism in general. you get charged for stuff the moment you get to have no other choice. healthcare being the worst case.