Re:Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
by camjohnson26 on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @06:05PM
(#20218918)
This is why I doubt any major cryptocurrency advances will come from an established company. The risk of noncompliance for them is too great, but to have an effective cryptocurrency you have to build it resistant to outside control. It’s a catch-22 for the companies.
Why does a cryptocurrency have to be resistant to outside control? Because otherwise there’s no reason to use it, since the existing networks run by Visa or the US dollar are more efficient and scalable. The value of bitcoin is in its equalization, no one person on the network’s voice matters more than another.
Re:Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra
by ThrustVectoring on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @11:25AM
(#20224165)
Yeah, in my book this is more of an attempt by a consortium of powerful companies to get a favorable regulatory regime for money transmitting. "Crypto" is only there to confuse regulators into making an exception.
This is actually a big problem with cryptocurrencies - you're removing middlemen who are legally obligated to enforce anti-money-laundering laws on behalf of governments. In general, cryptocurrencies will either live under existential threat from government law enforcement agencies, or their use cases will be restricted to interactions with centralized AML/KYC-compliant parties that might as well be using a database.