> If a centralized company wants to roll out electronic payments through its services it can just, you know, do that.

Not it can't. There's a world outside of the US where whole businesses run on WhatsApp. There is no solution, simply none today that exists to allow anyone from any country to register and start making and receiving payments. Not Stripe, not Paypal, none. If Facebook can deliver something that can then be exchanged for real dollars, that could be huge. If a person in a small village in Peru can just start receiving money from another person in another country and that the only barrier of entry is having WhatsApp installed on your phone, this could get ridiculously successful overnight.

And how does that person in that small village in Peru converts their WhatsApp coins, or whatever they are called, into actual money?

And if the answer is: they do a transaction with someone else who wants to trade their money for WhatsApp coins then again, why do you need the blockchain versus a centralized WhatsApp currency.

Blockchain is a solution when there cannot be trust. If I trust WhatsApp, and you trust WhatsApp, and WhatsApp has a money exchange feature, we don't need the blockchain.

It could be about the legality of aetting a bank in every country and figuring out rate exchange

Why would it be more legal / legally easier to set up a service in Peru that turns WhatsDubloons into soles and vice versa, affiliated with a multinational company that converts WhatsDubloons into USD, than an entity that directly transfers soles and USD?

Because these crypto exchanges already exist

> If Facebook can deliver something that can then be exchanged for real dollars, that could be huge.

There's absolutely zero reason for that something to be blockchain-based. They can just release Facebucks, a private fiat currency that's just backed by ... drumroll please... a relational database.

You mean like WeChat’s Yuan balances? The app where it’s extremely difficult for Americans to buy currency but that is ubiquitous throughout China?

It’s almost like none of these middle-brow dismissals have ever actually experienced a payment problem in another country.

Perhaps your better-positioned brow could clarify exactly how the involvement of a blockchain would solve WeChat's problem and make it easy for Americans to buy in?

In particular, if it could be done, why isn't WeChat doing it? And if WeChat can't do it, why can WhatsApp do it?

I presume the point was why do FB / WA need to use the blockchain?

because you still want the currency to have value if facebook closes one day, or stop supporting the idea. Facebook would endorse the currency, but the currency ecosystem would have a life of its own.

At least that’s my guess..

Why would Facebook have any interest in this? Public trust? Is the public that smart?

my guess is if facebook is working on its own blockchain currency, the algorithm describing the currency would be a bit different from bitcoin or ethereum. Contrary to what you read sometimes, those cryptocurrencies have properties that are not desirable for a real world currency ( aka inflationary and very poor number of transaction per seconds capacity).

If bitcoin and eth don't have a stable value in 2018, how does WhatsAppCoin sans Facebook guarantee have to stay stable?

I would imagine because actual commerce is built around it, rather than its valuation being mostly derived from speculative investment as a value hold.

Is anyone actually more skeptical in the long-term future of Facebook than of any altcoin?

(Remember that in order to prevent double-spend attacks, you need to ensure that nobody—and no potential mining pool—is sitting on more computing power than your network has. That's feasible for a single proof-of-work currency; it's technically impossble with even two unless one outcompetes and kills the other, and certainly practically impossible for a new one at this point. And if you're not using proof-of-work, what stability does the coin have once the corporate backer is gone?)

...or it could be they want to literally print money and have people use it in everyday commerce so they become a de facto Central Bank.

If it were merely an account one used to pay for things then they just get to take a small percentage in transaction fees but with a blockchain they can create a bunch of FaceCoins, sell them on the open market and if things go south with their cryptocurrency laugh all the way to the bank counting their billions.

India came up with UPI for this exact reason. Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Whatsapp Payments, etc. are all built on UPI in India. UPI is interoperable with all apps. So you can use whatever app you prefer. ie Whatsapp Payements can send money to someone using Google Pay directly.

This is probably the use-case. There's other obvious usecases as well; advertising, p2p loans, annoying the Winkelvoss entity, etc.

Since I said no even to an interview, it's hard to say what the parameters are for their thing, but I hope they fail.

you are suggesting that there is no value in blockchain and that cryptocurrency is not a good idea so Facebook and it's famous VP of Messenger and other Paypal execs were just trying to get into the hype. Or you can take another look and maybe the technology has something to offer. Don't mistake Facebook for an silly company.

The topic is stablecoins, with sources to websites that track that specific thing

Why would it be buzzword bingo if its an informative article that stays in context 100% of the time, include for what you consider buzzwords.

The actual criticism is that Stablecoins are just secured bearer bonds that anybody can issue inexpensively so you could see this happening for a long time.

You could at least do Buzzword Bingo since it's Facebook:

https://bullshitbingo.net/cards/buzzword/

> I wonder if they missed the shift this year where cryptocoins stopped being the coolest kid in the town anymore.

From an investors standpoint, yes.

From a technological and application standpoint, there is some cool new stuff happening.

How do you want to mention cryptocurrencies without mentioning blockchain?

There are algorithms and research of cryptographic cash that predate blockchains by decades.

And none of them were demonstrated to work in practice.

I've not heard the term "buzzword bingo" before. Quote of the week.

Classic Dilbert I think.

Wow, 1994. These things are timeless.

Makes me think it'd be really interesting to see a list of buzzwords (and how they've changed) over the past couple decades.

"synergy" is pretty timeless...

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.

If WhatsApp is the only client, FB can still control it since WhatsApp is proprietary

It's not going to be the only client, but Facebook has the network effects working for them, so it would be pointless or more difficult to use another client. In addition, they'll build services on top of it that are tightly tied into their ecosystem.