Startup idea checklist
707 adrian_mrd 14 hrs 165
https://www.defmacro.org/2019/03/26/startup-checklist.html
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20254057 Unable to load the content
Member since 2017-07-15T03:50:57Z. Last seen 2024-09-20T22:23:02Z.
2675 blog posts. 128 comments.
707 adrian_mrd 14 hrs 165
https://www.defmacro.org/2019/03/26/startup-checklist.html
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20254057 Unable to load the content
學生學不好英文,問題在全部英文課本寫得極差,全部都不及格!
大家先看學習時間吧。香港的小學生每個星期通常有8堂英文,即是320分鐘,每學年上課40個星期左右,算下來就是213小時,另外要扣除作文、默書、黑雨、病假、測驗、考試、運動會和特殊假期的時間,我假定純學習時間為150小時。六年小學有900小時純學習時間。小學生學了這麼長時間之後能說多少句英語呢?真的不多呢!如果他們再學900小時呢?為什麼再學900小時?這是因為他們都讀中學,而且通常都讀6年。學過1800小時之後,他們的英語還是十分差!這是效率問題!
問題在課本
我在中學教英文的日子不短,七級都教過。以我所見,大概只有兩成中學畢業生能夠說20句普通的英語,另外有一成能夠說得很好。這個情況已經出現了多年,所以是常態,不是例外。問題在哪裏?在課本。
課本不好,例如:
一、每課都沒有生字表,但是有「無限多的生字」,在課文裏面有生字,在練習裏面有,甚至在練習上面的指示裏面也有。老師極難教,學生怎能應付(不應該用「應對」一詞)?每一課最好只有25個生字,這是經驗之談;
二、文法安排得「狠」,在小五和小六的英文書裏面有簡單現在式、現在進行式、現在完成式、簡單過去式、過去進行式和簡單將來式,還有被動式、動名詞、獨立運用的過去分詞及現在分詞。正常的小學生根本不能搞得通這麼多東西,我讀完中學時也搞不通獨立運用的過去分詞及現在分詞;
三、解說不夠,例子不夠,練習也不夠,連作業裏面的練習也不夠。每種句法學生大概要做50句才可以把握得住。什麼叫做囫圇吞棗呢?學生最清楚,就是「見」過很多東西,但是什麼也學不到;
四、只要出版社沒有寫錯字詞,它們的書便可以通過政府審查去做教科書,可以賺錢了;學生學得好不好不是他們的問題,而從來都沒有教授敢挑戰他們。可悲!可嘆!(待續)
作者為資深教育工作者
Although details have not been confirmed, it is likely that Facebook will use its new currency to enable payments within the Facebook platform. If it is not tethered to the Facebook platform, investors will be able to invest in Libra by buying and trading it on digital exchanges.
Here’s where savvy blockchain investors can learn from the thousands of altcoins that have launched over the past few years.
Value is driven by users. The blockchain is about people: the more people who use a blockchain, the more valuable it becomes, due to network effects. Facebook is one of the most valuable networks on the planet, giving its currency a potentially massive valuation (if they can get enough people using it).
Value will likely accrue to Facebook stock. Because Libra is envisioned as a stablecoin (e.g., a digital currency with a stable value, like the dollar), the value of the new economy would likely flow into Facebook’s stock price. In other words, for every dollar invested in Libra, consider a dollar in FB stock.
Trading opportunities abound. While we are generally fans of blockchain value investing (“buy and hold”), there will be many opportunities for trading (“buy and sell”), including arbitraging against other stablecoins and other global currencies. Trading will be a rich area of opportunity, especially at launch.
Libra in your 401(k): The dream is an automated platform that withdraws, say, $100 from your bank account each month, investing $10 in Libra and $90 in FB stock. This would offer a convenient way to diversify everyday investors into digital currencies (10%) with the overall stock market (90%).
The beginning of the next wave: If the new Facebook coin takes off, expect other tech companies to follow suit with their own digital currencies. As a rule of thumb, the companies with the most network effects will be the ones that accrue the most value (think Google, Twitter, Apple).
The blockchain is about people. Facebook, with its focus on connecting people, is in a perfect position to become a blockchain leader overnight.
For the latest information on Libra, as well as great investing ideas, subscribe to our Bitcoin Market Journal weekly newsletter, because it’s free!
Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra 1102 timcc50 1 day 1224 https://decrypt.co/7502/facebook-libra-coin-cryptocurrency-launch-calibra news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20210791 mekoka 10 hrs Let's play a game of predictions.
Regardless of HN's opinion of Facebook (and regardless of my own for that matter) I predict that this thing will work.
This is only one thing my crystal ball showed me.
Facebook's presence in developing economies is massive. To the point of being synonymous with "The Internet" in a number of places. But they've had a nagging problem. People in these economies consume contents, but do not buy. Even when they have some buying power, access to credit cards is harder to come by. So they're basically seen as online leeches, and you simply fit them in the "expense" category of your media production. Also, due to their buying impotence they're almost immune to advertisement. Over the next few months it's all going to change. Multiple agreements will be signed with various financial institutions and probably more with various telecom in those regions, to allow people to load up their accounts with fbcoins and join the Great Internet Spending Frenzy. Basically turning them overnight into consumers, ripe for the picking.
I foresee big media producing companies in the developed world to be the first to take advantage of this (Disney, Valve, Netflix, YouTube, NYT, various online courses and certifications, etc). Shipping to those regions remains a challenge, so only soft goods for now. IKEA and Walmart will allow fbcoins, but just to be able to sell through their Facebook Store, oh I forgot about those. Anyways.
Next year, Google and Amazon will announce their own stablecoin.
The year after that, Google will announce that they're shutting theirs.
Abishek_Muthian 9 hrs Facebook's hold in developing economies is true. But developing economy's hold on their Fiat currency is true as well. So much so that, India is planning to jail anyone who is holding cryptocurrency for 10 years1!
If this legislation passes, any computer scientist, mathematician, programmer who is working with crypto tokens & block chain can technically be held liable for possessing a crypto currency when they run their program?
Yes, the plan to jail those who hold cryptocurrency in a democratic country is preposterous; but this shows how sensitive a developing economy could be when it comes to its money. It's not like the data of their citizens which these countries give a free run to the hoarders, money is totally different ball game.
I wonder if Facebook decides to give a free crypto to everyone who holds a FB account, anyone in India with a FB account will go to jail including those who proposing such legislations?
P.S I don't hold any cryptocurrency due to its impact on energy and thereby planet (Also, I'm including this just in case the legislation passes in my country!).
hjk05 5 hrs
Yes, the plan to jail those who hold cryptocurrency in a democratic country is preposterous
No it isn’t. We jail people who hold child pornography in democratic countries as well. The core of a democratic country is that it’s governed by democratically elected representatives, not that it’s citizens be allowed access to whatever they want independent of criminal consequences.
I get you and others are calling to the sentiment of “how can we be free if we aren’t free to x” but the value of that sentiment isn’t independent of what X is. You aren’t free to rob banks and you aren’t free to print you own paper currency. Just because crypto is digital and “difficult to stop”(it isn’t though) does not mean that it has to be freely available to business and individuals. It’s still up to our democratically elected representatives to decide if they feel private institutions printing money without control will damage the economy significantly enough to not allow it.
0x445442 1 hr
you aren’t free to print you own paper currency
As far as I know, in the U.S. you are free to print your own paper currency, just so long as it doesn't conterfeit that which is produced by the Federal Reserve Bank. Also, there's nothing illegal about conducting transactions with it either, provided you can find willing trade partners.
impendia 1 hr
in the U.S. you are free to print your own paper currency
Indeed, this is currently done. For example:
captainredbeard 11 mins Not everyone agrees on the validity of mob rule.
Abishek_Muthian 5 hrs
If this legislation passes, any computer scientist, mathematician, programmer who is working with crypto tokens & block chain can technically be held liable for possessing a crypto currency when they run their program?
Please appropriate your logic on that.
awelkie 3 hrs
If this legislation passes, any computer scientist, mathematician, programmer who is working with [automated ponzi schemes] can technically be held liable for [creating a ponzi scheme] when they run their program?
I don't see the issue. When a democratic society thinks something isn't good, they can outlaw it. There are all sorts of regulations on financial transactions and investments already.
I'm not trying to imply that cryptocurrencies are ponzi schemes, just that when something is illegal, doing it on your computer doesn't make it not illegal.
awelkie 3 hrs Furthermore, were cryptocurrencies to become illegal, it would probably be similar to computer viruses; It's fine to play with viruses on your personal computer or in a lab, but it's illegal to use one "in the wild." So I doubt it would be as absurd as you claim.
Abishek_Muthian 2 hrs
It's fine to play with viruses on your personal computer or in a lab, but it's illegal to use one "in the wild."
I hope cops understand the difference. When I was in school, computer science teachers asked us to remove the shoes, because 'virus from it' would infect the computers at the lab.
lentil_soup 1 hr I guess similar to how a chemical lab might use compounds that are illegal in the wild or a pharmaceutical company holding classified drugs.
MadSudaca 2 hrs Found the authoritarian.
Bakary 51 mins This implies that crypto is a democratizing force. So far, it's been mostly early adopters wanting to preserve the system under which they are wealthy and powerful. Who can blame them? I'd do the exact same. But in other words, the same age-old pattern that is barely any different from the banking system that crypto was supposed to bypass, except the inequality actually manages to be quite higher.
mekoka 2 hrs Thank you for your input. I'm not very familiar with India's politics, so I cannot be too assertive on its politicians' inflexibility.
I noticed that you expanded a bit on the "cryptocurrency" angle. May I invite you to a different perspective for a second. I don't think Facebook cares whether or not their Libra is crypto or otherwise. Despite appearances this is not a discussion about crypto anything. Facebook is not out to revolutionize money. Facebook has an ecosystem, a walled garden. It also has first mover advantage in many economies with a quasi monopoly. So in essence it has a huge potential market that's just sitting out there waiting. But what Facebook doesn't have (yet) is a tap to suck at the delicious nectar. That's where the Libra comes in.
Facebook is willing to play ball with whoever will allow them to install the tap. They will do all that is necessary for the tap to be legitimized. If it means pinning it to the Euro, the Dollar, the Yuan, it'll be so. Just as long as it's recognized. Once that happens, it's more advertisement revenue and a slew of new paid services through the walled garden. Meanwhile out of the walled garden, revenue from transaction fees to an unprecedented level.
This is not a cryptocurrency conversation.
Abishek_Muthian 1 hr I will try to travel on the same angle, I brought in India because you predicted Facebook's success on developing economy and India is the largest user base for Facebook besides it being a developing economy.
Crypto or not, it is still a digital currency which is not being controlled by the central bank of the country i.e. India in my example. Especially when the country is trying to roll out a digital currency of its own.
For the sake of argument, let's assume Facebook has no compliance trouble with any of the countries; will Libra be successful? It most definitely will, because Facebook has the capacity diminish friction and users would use Libra like any other coins found in a mobile game like candy crush.
nroets 7 hrs In South Africa, we still have capital controls. My mom earned dollars through PayPal. She couldn't spend it online and had to convert her earnings to Rand within 3 months. Bureaucrats will insist that the same rules apply to libra.
India is even less ready for relaxing capital controls. They will tell Facebook to block libra for their citizens or be firewalled. No one is going to jail, but libra will not succeed there.
Abishek_Muthian 7 hrs Talking of PayPal in India, money should be automatically remitted to the bank account immediately.
At-least 3 months in SA sounds reasonable incase we have to process any refund, though I'm not trying to belittle the discomfort faced by your mother.
arisAlexis 3 hrs that is why totally decentralised systems such as Bitcoin are important. Noone can firewall it
JOnAgain 2 hrs Capital controls can be an important part of a monetary system. It’s not part of most western countries’ systems, but it’s a very valid tool with a real purpose.
NicoJuicy 2 hrs And the people who aren't technical will forget their password.
Since there is no centralized government, they lost their money.
Source: wrote some articles on my own "media" website to try out SEO.
Most popular article, how to recover Bitcoin password
baby 8 hrs
I don't hold any cryptocurrency due to its impact on energy
Just to note, the impact of Libra on energy is very very light compared to the current banking system. It does not use proof of work.
nr152522 8 hrs Yes, and there are also projects like chia 0 that aim to be a green digital currency.
Abishek_Muthian 8 hrs I agree, even those based on Mimblewimble, Casper should alleviate my energy concerns. Then again I can't posses them with the risk of jail term looming around.
rimliu 6 hrs How about impact of Facebook on energy compared to the current banking system?
akerro 7 hrs
who is holding cryptocurrency for 10 years[
zuckcoin isn't cryptocurrency, it's digital currency, like gold in WoW
Abishek_Muthian 7 hrs The draft policy is titled, "Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019".
Anything which is not official digital currency will be liable for action.
stOneskull 8 hrs I think India, or most other countries, will deem facebook coins an exception. It's probably being negotiated right now.
Abishek_Muthian 8 hrs Facebook's 'Free Basics' didn't work in India in spite of negotiations and even 'hugging'1.
mayankkaizen 6 hrs Indian central bank (RBI) is rather conservative and cautious. Also, its policies don't always agree with that of indian government.
I have a strong hunch it just wouldn't let Libra be legal currency.
Besides, given that currently government is run by a ulta right wing party, so it might be possible they wouldn't agree to Facebook plans.
asdfaoeu 8 hrs You are assuming they use those laws to lock up Libra users and not just the competition. It seems likely they could allow censorable cryptocurrencies like Libra.
Abishek_Muthian 8 hrs The proposed law is generic to any cryptocurrency, in-fact it was proposed before the Libra was in news.
It's not about censorship, it's about taxation.
inopinatus 6 hrs In three years, Libra will be the largest single venue of public financial services. All branches of retail banks are upgraded with Libra teller machines, becoming fully distributed. Afterwards, they transact with a perfect operational record. The Blockchain Currency Bill is passed, replacing the dollar with Libra. The system goes online on August 4th, 2022. Human decisions are removed from central banking. Libra begins hashing at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
jraph 6 hrs I love these comments.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18281465 (context: "I really wonder what's going to happen to Linux once Linus is gone")
We maybe should build a list of these. Dystopic answers to HN's unattended writting prompts, or something.
avip 4 hrs No need to reinvent the wheel http://longbets.org/
deafcalculus 2 hrs Developing countries aren't going to be too happy about this. If a large number of a country's citizens adopt this, it forces that country to lose its independence over monetary policy. Since Libra is not controlled by the local government, this is not a fixed exchange rate regime, it's effectively dollarization and can have far reaching consequences.
IMHO, the Libra is at the same time too ambitious (in aiming for full capital convertibility across nations) and too timid (in entirely giving up monetary independence). A libra-usd, Libra-euro, libra-inr, etc. which allows countries to retain monetary sovereignty would have been easier for governments to accept. But then, Facebook can't say it's a new currency and circumvent KYC and other local regulations. But who knows? Stranger things have happened. The euro is a currency without a state. Maybe the time has come for denationalizing money.
halukakin 1 hr If it were to affect US economy adversely I think FED could chip in and have a say in Libra's direction. But other economies could be hurt by Libra's position.
Personally I don't mind the monetary independence of countries. But real people could lose real jobs since their governments don't get a say in Libra's governance.
esjeon 7 hrs
Basically turning them overnight into consumers, ripe for the picking.
Well, credit cards are already too easy to use. Many services already save your credit card info, and you're already one or two clicks away from purchasing. Still, you normally don't buy anything that appears next to blog/SNS posts.
But, I agree with that Facebook means really a lot here. Being a stable coin, Libra is much closer to a payment platform - like Visa, MasterCard and Papal - than other cryptocurrencies. Facebook can use its influence to push Libra into various platforms, and Libra can become a de-facto standard payment method in no time.
However, governments will happily regulate transactions b/w countries, which will limit the potential of the coin. Libra is Swiss Bank 2.0 in some senses.
I foresee big media producing companies in the developed world to be the first to take advantage of this
It can bring consumers in developing countries to the table, but those countries usually have slow connections, which leads to lower consumption of digital media. Distribution of the coin also can be a problem too. SWIFT is expensive, and fewer people have credit cards.
nostrademons 6 hrs I predict that Libra will work for a while, but will eventually be overshadowed either by competitors or by the new markets that it enables.
There's this pattern I've noticed where every major tech company, once initial traction has been established, gets three pivots. You can think of them as adolescence, mid-life, and rebirth.
The first pivot happens when the company is 5-8 years old (since the 1970s at least; older before then), and serves to define the company. The System 360 for IBM, defining it as the provider of mainframes for enterprises. MS-DOS for Microsoft, defining it as the dominant PC OS. The Macintosh for Apple, defining it as the most user-friendly consumer brand out there. GMail and Maps for Google, defining it as the conglomerate of the Internet age. Mobile for Facebook, defining it as the service that connects people regardless of where they are.
The second pivot happens when the company is 10-15, at the height of its dominance, and usually results from it entering the hottest new technology wave with a vengeance. It looks like it succeeds for a while, crushes early entrants, serves to legitimize that technology wave, but ultimately peters out as the company can't keep up with the changes that it introduces. The IBM PC for IBM, which legitimized the PC market but ultimately fell to clones. Internet Explorer for Microsoft, which legitimized the Internet but ultimately was eclipsed by Google's many products. The Newton for Apple, which legitimized the PDA market but ultimately was too early. Google+ for Google, which legitimized social networking but ultimately failed to gain traction.
The third pivot is when the company realizes that they basically incapable of innovating, and returns to the roots they established with the first pivot to live out their old age. Open-source consulting for IBM, leveraging their massive installed base of enterprise customers. VS Code, XBox, and Azure for Microsoft, recognizing that they are fundamentally a platforms company. The iPhone and iPad for Apple, refocusing on their strengths in UX and delivering top-quality consumer electronics products. Alphabet for Google, realizing that they're fundamentally a conglomerate that lets a thousand flowers bloom (and cancels 990 of them).
Libra is Facebook's second pivot. It'll look like it succeeds for a while, it'll legitimize cryptocurrency, but it'll ultimately end up eclipsed by what it creates.
asdfman123 30 mins Really, it's a service the government should run and regulate. But governments in general are too slow-moving, and the US government is too conservative for that to happen. I don't think Republicans would be down for more government control.
seymore_12 4 hrs Cannot agree more. All Greek tragedies are based on hubris nemesis catharsis cycle. Unfortunately, many projects, companies nowadays skip the catharsis stage and jump to the next hubris.
feanaro 8 hrs What you're saying does make sense, but can we please not use this as an excuse not to know better?
Maybe the citizens of some Spooky Third World country don't really have a choice due to their unique circumstances, but many of us do.
Let's not use the Spooky Third World country as an argument for why the dominance of Libra is inevitable before it even starts existing. Let's not be so hasty to become a dystopian novel.
on_and_off 7 hrs Generally the word dystopian is overused, but Facebook in charge of a currency ? dystopian sounds like an euphemism.
tasssko 5 hrs The challenge with your predictions is they contain too many biases. Your worlds view is dominated by these companies so much that you think that is the only outcome. Libra is likely to validate existing crypto further because it is not financed or backed by commercial interests. Facebook doesn't create economies that is just marketing speak. If they did they would not rely so much on ads to fund the business. In an economy the facilitator gets paid from the transaction.
My issue with Libra is it is a digital currency dressed up as crypto. That means it will be subjected to the same kinds of arbitrage opportunities you get from currency fluctuations and flows. Think of George Soros in the eighties kind of fluctuations.
Right now I don't see the fuss with Libra or understand how the world will be better. All I see is marketing and PR. I guess this is the crypto calling card.
anonymous5133 8 hrs Completely agree. Many people are thinking way too narrow for how big facebook is. Project libra will be the great equalizer and put everyone more or less on the same "economic playing field" so to speak. Since this community is heavily startup focused, everyone here should be thinking of how they can capitalize on this next frontier of the internet. The money isn't made by speculating on libra coin, it is made by creating innovative services/solutions.
ovi256 2 hrs
year after that, Google will announce that they're shutting theirs
The line no one can disagree with.
halukakin 5 hrs Fixed currencies would only hurt emerging economies. When the economy goes into crisis who will change the interest rates on those currencies and help the economy recover? No one.
koliber 1 hr This is eye opening.
Banking in many African economies came from an unexpected place: basic non-smart cell phones and the ability to transfer relatively small amounts of money quickly, reliably, and without a bank account.
I can see Facebook leveraging its foothold in such economies and providing the same service.
Wow.
bob_paulson 2 hrs no privacy at all in Libra. We will lose our financial privacy. Better to use a privacy coin i.e Monero or better Mimblewimble's coins such as Grin but especially Beam.
IloveHN84 9 hrs You forgot about Apple coin on their credit card. Available at 999$ for the exchange rate.
growtofill 8 hrs Just enough to buy the monitor stand.
neuronic 6 hrs Pay $1200 for the card and get a monitor stand for free!
drusepth 7 hrs Actually, not enough with tax. :(
mimixco 2 hrs That scenario falls apart when the global poor don't have any money to buy FB coins, which they don't. Agreements with banks won't give the unbanked the free cash flow to play around with digital money or buy a bunch of stuff online.
I think they whole issue of the unbanked is a ruse. Facebook stands to earn more here by trying to convert regular consumers away from PayPal and debit cards and charge them fees for exchanging in and out of Libra. They'll also invite regulation in crypto so they can be the only one who meets the regulatory requirements and shut out the others. It's an end run around crypto without being one itself.
Bombthecat 9 hrs Yap,we will see way,way way more stable coins from a ton of different companies. Soon or later you will get paid in those ( probably not so stable coin anymore)
The world reminds me more and more like the world in the book(s) of shadowrun, minus the magic stuff..really facinating...
throwaway287391 6 hrs
Multiple agreements will be signed with various financial institutions and probably more with various telecom in those regions, to allow people to load up their accounts with fbcoins and join the Great Internet Spending Frenzy.
This is the part I don't get. I thought we were talking about all-cash economies in regions with essentially no banking, but then you bring up "various financial institutions [...] in those regions". So is it that they have banks but just aren't using them? If so, what is it about FBCoin that's going to suddenly make such people want to go en masse to their bank to get them, if they didn't bother doing so to get all the security and additional payment options that a bank account already offered? (Pardon the ignorance, I'm genuinely trying to understand how this bootstrapping could work.)
mekoka 2 hrs Not all-cash, rather mostly cash. They do have banks, but think of banking as a luxury in those economies, not a commodity. They're for well established businesses and the rich. For everybody else, banks can be really tedious to deal with. So unless they have the means, people tend to just avoid the hassle. Even simply opening a bank account can be prohibitive, forget about getting a credit card, even prepaid.
There's a variety of independent institutions that provide some services to fill the gaps. For example, telecom companies are often used as a medium to send money. There are also smaller, third-party or local financial service providers (formal and informal), that are more convenient for the short term, day-to-day way of life in these places. They can offer small loans, micro-financing, money transfer, and a number of other devices. And yes, currently they're the ones people generally go through to make purchases over the Internet. Fees are not always competitive.
One typical approach people understand very well in a day-to-day economy is the preloaded cards. For small amounts (think 20$ or less) people can go to their telecom card provider and purchase some fbcoins. But that's not the hard part of the equation. The hard part is to get the other side (the developed world) to recognize the fbcoin. This is what's at play here and now. If Facebook can show to the world, "look, Netflix and YouTube can now take your money", they'd have won a huge part of the battle.
vivekd 19 hrs This is an interesting story and I would like to learn more about libra-coin. Unfortunately I think hackernews has a strong anti-facebook bias that is making the opinions here nearly universally one sided.
I think we can say three things fairly uncontroversially in favor of this
The world could use an online independent currency
Adding stability to blockchain currencies and having that work on a large scale is a good thing
Unlike government issued currencies, any monopoly or control facebook derives isn't done through force, it's by making a coin better than all the other coins. Other people are still free to make their competing coins.
That said I understand the detractions that many here are presenting. I just wish there could be a deeper exploration of both the pros and cons.
generalk 19 hrs
- The world could use an online independent currency
I'm not 100% steeped in cryptocurrency theory, and so I don't understand why this is presented as if it's agreed on by everyone. What problems does the world have that would be solved by an online, independent [of any nation, presumably?] currency?
- Adding stability to blockchain currencies and having
that work on a large scale is a good thing
Having a blockchain-based currency at a huge scale would be interesting for many reasons, but I'm not seeing how it's a fiat "good thing," excepting if you're excited about the technology and waiting for a big player to push it forward.
- Unlike government issued currencies, any monopoly or
control facebook derives isn't done through force, it's by
making a coin better than all the other coins. Other
people are still free to make their competing coins.
I can't buy into the meritocracy/free market purity argument for a currency. Things are already volatile enough, and sometimes economies collapse and people's life savings become worthless. "Other people can make competing coins" sounds an awful lot to me like treating collapse as a feature.
taurath 18 hrs
I'm not 100% steeped in cryptocurrency theory, and so I don't understand why this is presented as if it's agreed on by everyone. What problems does the world have that would be solved by an online, independent [of any nation, presumably?] currency?
Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut of every single consumer payment made in much of the world. That ends up being a very, very big number.
There are many people all over the world without access to banking - they can't store money, they can't transfer money, and they can't invest money. That may be someone who has poor credit in the US, or someone who's living in rural India or Africa. Without access to banking, you are essentially cut off from globalization.
If you live in a country that has extremely tight currency and economic controls but with a corrupt government, and are experiencing hyperinflation (Zimbabwe, Venezuela, others https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate), access to alternative currencies can literally be the difference between life and death for individuals, where the money you make on your salary will be worthless by the time you get your check.
Plenty of other examples. Whether this is a good solution I don't know, they just announced it.
hjk05 18 hrs
Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut of every single consumer payment made in much of the world. That ends up being a very, very big number.
In Denmark we solved this the lowtech way. Visa cards have to be Dual visa/dancard, where the dancard has extremely low cut limited by law(0,055$/transaction flat rate)
It’s not hard, it just requires you have politicians capable of dodging the huge piles of cash MasterCard and Visa throw at them whenever talk of breaking the duopoly hits the table.
But maybe for the US, something like bitcoin will be the only way forwards, using technology to try to solve a market problem though “disruptive technology” when what is really needed is just disruptive politicians.
Meekro 18 hrs Dancard works for local payments, but the discussion here is about the growing demand to transact with foreign companies online. For example, if you're in Denmark and you want to buy a SaaS subscription from a US company, you're stuck giving them a Visa/MC number. Some of the downsides of this are the 3% fee, risk of the number being stolen, not to mention Visa/MC applying US law and morals to kill businesses anywhere in the world.
vageli 17 hrs
Dancard works for local payments, but the discussion here is about the growing demand to transact with foreign companies online. For example, if you're in Denmark and you want to buy a SaaS subscription from a US company, you're stuck giving them a Visa/MC number. Some of the downsides of this are the 3% fee, risk of the number being stolen, not to mention Visa/MC applying US law and morals to kill businesses anywhere in the world.
If there was political will, there is nothing stopping governments from capping the fees taken by Visa/MC.
sgjohnson 7 hrs The fees on Visa/MasterCard in the EU are capped at 0.2% for debit cards, 0.3% for credit cards.
American Express (and all the other schemes where the issuer is also the acquirer, i.e. Diners Club) aren’t capped.
The 0.3% cap however did kill Amex’s licensing model where they let other banks around Europe issue their cards, so they simply withdrew from those, as 0.3% is not enough to pay for the rewards.
Note that this is just interchange. Payment processors still charge merchants whatever they damn please.
traek 15 hrs Many people feel the solution to bad products is making better competing products rather than adding government regulation.
SquishyPanda23 13 hrs I may be in the minority here, but it's possible that there can be a scientific economics.
Sure you feel one way. Other people feel another.
But it's also possible the correct answer doesn't depend on your feelings but on falsifiable theories.
rightos 11 hrs I don't think you can come up with a quality test for economic scenarios in a truly scientific way, many monopolies dominate for very different reasons, many industries have very different mechanics, and worse, regulations are often implemented in vastly different ways and often won't come out the way you'd like them to even if you have a perfect scientific answer to a given problem.
You can't guarantee or even approximate a given input and output for a scenario like this.
tanzbaer 11 hrs Look up Hayek on the pretense of knowledge in economics.
SquishyPanda23 2 mins Hayek isn't particularly well regarded as an economist, even among those that love his politics.
See e.g. Milton Friedman's comments about how flawed Hayek's economics are and how great Road to Serfdom is.
So my take on that speech is it's political rather than scientific.
In general I'm skeptical of arguments that something is unknowable unless they come with a rigorous proof or at least a well stated conjecture that has stood the test of time.
jodrellblank 14 hrs Many people feel that regulating abusive monopolies which kill competitors in underhanded ways is a better solution than expecting greed to solve it.
gigatexal 11 hrs This. There shouldn’t be punishments to middlemen who provide a service just come up with a better way. Innovation should happen here not governments enacting laws that effectively kill all the profits a company can make.
tastroder 5 hrs I think we don't have to go to cryptocurrencies to see that these punishments are severly needed. Just look at the weekly scandals of "disruptive" new startup banks, people's financials deserve a few governmental protections and if the middlemen are shitty at their job (due to malice or mere incompetence) they deserve a little punishment here or there.
I get that this type of oversight is likely against some philosophical POV here but it's not like middlemen making money is an all-to-great and solitary goal a society should try to defend.
gigatexal 2 hrs There are rent seeking “middle-men” companies out there just milking patents or their position without providing much if anything of value. I’ll admit that. But I would contend that the credit card processing companies charging 3 to 5 percent are providing a value in the complexity that is payments but whether that warrants 3 to 5 percent I’m not qualified to say just I wanted to make the distraction between the types of middlemen.
bhtru 14 hrs Agreed, it's not as though Visa/MC will decide to exit a country altogether foregoing any revenue.
ivan_gammel 8 hrs Every additional payment method supported by XaaS is one more reason for using 3rd party payment processing, meaning that there will be a fee even on independent cryptocurrency. It’s not a solution.
jackschultz 17 hrs
It’s not hard, it just requires you have politicians capable of dodging the huge piles of cash MasterCard and Visa throw at them whenever talk of breaking the duopoly hits the table.
Ignoring the difficulty of avoiding lobbying money, yes, it'd be difficult. This is a large scale financial change and there are always, always loopholes that will come, not just from politicians who make those because of lobbying money. With how giant the economies are, and how often these cards are used, it isn't a simple move at all.
Look at credit card chip readers in the US. The amount of backend equipment change it took to get something "that simple" in action was a lot. I'm not defending them for it not being quicker, but a move like a duel card is absolutely difficult.
CaptainZapp 1 hr Look at credit card chip readers in the US. The amount of backend equipment change it took to get something "that simple" in action was a lot.
I'd wager that the banks didn't give a damn as long as fraud was cheaper than investing into a new, much securer system. France was the first country to introduce chips into debit cards and tha was in 19901
1 http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/history_of_cards/ind...
benj111 16 hrs "Look at credit card chip readers in the US."
Europe made this jump well over a decade ago.
It isn't a backend equipment problem.
Dual cards are easy btw. I used to have a joint Amex MasterCard. Separate cards, but same account.
blatantlies 6 hrs Not sure if matters but at least to my understanding, DanKort is a debit card, so I would expect it to have a flat rate since the cost of transaction is less dependent on the total amount vs a credit card transaction where there is more clearance and risk involved?
At least in some jurisdictions I lived, debit card is as good as cash (well, not exactly the same but because handling cash has also its cost, most of retailers treat them equally)
sytelus 14 hrs Cards are yesterday things. Many countries quickly moving on to phone based payments. Its much secure (requires touch or face ID) than doing fake signatures. I've no idea why visa/mastercard can't move to this. The often given reason for massive 5% cut is potential voided transactions, merchant setup, cashback expected by customers and ofcourse profit. Much of these can be eliminated by phone based transactions. This space is ripe for disruption.
stef25 3 hrs
Many countries quickly moving on to phone based payments
Even as a tech guy, no thanks. Phones are mostly ok but still fuck up too frequently to trust them with anything serious.
gruez 12 hrs
Many countries quickly moving on to phone based payments. Its much secure (requires touch or face ID) than doing fake signatures.
EMV is a thing, you know. And cards don't run out of battery or get smashed like phones.
baby 11 hrs But that's the point. Monzo is the best bank in the world and yet it's only available in the UK. As soon as you're trying to cross a border it becomes challenging. A cryptocurrency can be a very useful solution here: it skips decenies of progress to set up an interoperable network for banks and custodians to use (and users as well if they want to).
Galanwe 9 hrs
A cryptocurrency can be a very useful solution here: it skips decenies of progress
The fact that it is a cryto currency is merely anecdotal. Its an implementation detail. It makes people think this currency is actually distributed as most other crypto currencies, while in fact it's just a consortium of companies having total control over all aspects (issuance, destruction, etc.) of the currency.
set up an interoperable network for banks and custodians to use
This is just plain wrong. It's not banks or custodians that use this currency, it's just end users and the consortium. Banks are heavily controlled and regulated. I mainly trust governments and legal systems to take fair decisions or litigate properly monetary issues. There is nothing like that here. The consortium of companies owning the currency decide the amount they want to create, they decide who gets refund and why, etc. I have much more trust in a country and a judiciary system than a bunch of worldwide companies to handle my currency.
CaptainZapp 1 hr The consortium of companies owning the currency decide the amount they want to create, they decide who gets refund and why
Don't forget the amount of support they will provide. Looking at major tech companies and their histories in providing customer support I see a rather bleak picture here.
This goes also for all those new fangled disruptive app banks. Guess how much success an N26 (new German app bank) customer had to contact support after 80'000 Euro went missing from his account. Spoiler: Until it was a massive story in the press, not much.1
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N26_(bank)#Controversy
baby 8 hrs
The fact that it is a cryto currency is merely anecdotal
Completely agree. It's a currency.
It's not banks or custodians that use this currency, it's just end users and the consortium
I do not agree with this
I have much more trust in a country and a judiciary system
compared to a protocol that can be monitored for the total amount of money it holds?
dazc 9 hrs 'Monzo is the best bank in the world...'
For small, everyday transactions this may be true but mainstream banks are much better for all the other stuff.
baby 9 hrs define "all the other stuff"
goatinaboat 8 hrs Being able to provide services when its customers are outside of its home country?
Serious banks have been doing that for literally hundreds of years.
baby 8 hrs Monzo does that too :| I use it all over the world because it has no fees.
sgjohnson 4 hrs
Monzo is the best bank in the world
That's very subjective.
dan1234 17 hrs
Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut of every single consumer payment made in much of the world. That ends up being a very, very big number.
I think you’re overestimating that rate, and by quite a bit. Mastercard’s fees seem to be between 0.2%-1.65%0 depending on the card and transaction type.
I didn’t bother to look for Visa’s rate, but I’d imagine it’d be similar.
0https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/about-mastercard/what-we-...
desdiv 11 hrs You are correct if you interpret "Visa and Mastercard" as literally Mastercard Incorporated and Visa Inc.
He used "Visa and Mastercard" as a metonymy for the entire payment processing network i.e. payment gateway + issuing bank + acquiring bank + card networks. The total fee for the entire network is indeed 3-4%, and as you rightly pointed out, Mastercard Incorporated and Visa Inc. fees actually only make up for less than half of the total transaction fees.
oasisbob 6 hrs That chart is for interchange fees, which is only one part of the fees a merchant will pay. It's the portion which is returned to the issuing bank.
It doesn't include the fees which go to MasterCard, nor does it include the fees paid by the merchant to their merchant bank.
camgunz 15 hrs
If you live in a country that has extremely tight currency and economic controls but with a corrupt government, and are experiencing hyperinflation (Zimbabwe, Venezuela, others https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate), access to alternative currencies can literally be the difference between life and death for individuals, where the money you make on your salary will be worthless by the time you get your check.
Those same "tight currency and economic controls" apply just as much to cryptocurrencies as they do to Visa gift cards. There's nothing better about "Venezuelans should've used cryptocurrency" versus "Venezuelans should've used dollars".
But beyond that, people have the right to determine their country's monetary policy independent of, say, Bitcoin devs, Facebook executives, or a foreign government (ex: Venezuelans using USD), and it's hard for me to ignore the vague scent of opportunism here. The solution to corrupt governments is not "get rid of all governments", it's "get rid of corrupt governments".
sytelus 14 hrs
There's nothing better about "Venezuelans should've used cryptocurrency" versus "Venezuelans should've used dollars".
US has often taken advantage of its dominant world currency position. For example, massive amount of QE that eventually gets absorbed worldwide with little inflation in US. Similarly "petro dollars". The bottom line is that if someone is allowed to print currency at whim, they will.
goatinaboat 8 hrs Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut of every single consumer payment made in much of the world. That ends up being a very, very big number.
There are two assumptions you are making, both of which are false. The first is that handling cash isn't expensive, but it is. You have to store in various secure locations, transport it between those locations, count it multiple times... And that's true even if you're a market trader or a small shop. For those people it could easily be a significant part of their day and a significant risk, all of which goes away with cards (and the fee is nowhere near 3-4%, it's more like 1-2%).
The second is that, in a market that has demonstrated a willingness to accept the transaction fees of the major card providers, that anyone would "leave money on the table". Sure they'll undercut them initially to win market share but once they have it, the price will inexorably creep back up to the level the market will bear.
taurath 8 hrs My assumptions are based in that I’ve worked in the industry. There’s plenty of small restaurants that are cash only, because they operate on the thinnest of margins. Gas stations as well. To the merchant, a fee of 3% + .10c per transaction is very common. More for Amex.
The second point sounds like an economics 101 conclusion. Network effects are real. Regulatory capture is real. Starting a new card network is harder than beating google in ad revenue in search.
stef25 3 hrs Quite sure that "cash only" means "fake books"
blatantlies 6 hrs not saying it is the case but a lot of restaurants I worked were cash only because their supply chain was very low tech (also cash-only) and they simply didn't pay the taxes.
Gas stations might be higher at least in the USA because the kick back for gas is sometimes higher (e.g.: 1% cash back). Also, gas stations seem to really don't want to handle cash those days.
fnord77 15 hrs
Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut
have you tried buying anything with bitcoin? currently the transaction fee is almost $2 to have your transaction confirmed within 10 minutes.
Not a lot on big purchases, but that's 20% if you're say trying to buy a $10 lunch with bitcoin.
stef25 3 hrs
lunch
Bitcoin fees are basically just the price you pay for having drugs delivered to your house.
vpzom 14 hrs Bitcoin isn't the only cryptocurrency, and many others have much lower fees
marcus_holmes 10 hrs It's the only cryptocurrency that anyone outside of the crypto world has heard of/takes any interest in/would consider letting you buy their stuff with
noob_slayer 11 hrs Have you tried buying anything with Bitcoin Cash? Currently the transaction fee is under 500 satoshi (about 1/5 of 1 US cent) to have your transaction included in the next block.
bildung 6 hrs Because no one uses it, or not? Transaction prices are determined by supply and demand on Bitcoin Cash, too, AFAIK.
markphip 18 hrs The true value of any currency is what you can do with it. If someone owns some coin and wants to buy some food to feed their family, the seller of the food first has to accept the coin, but regardless what value the rest of the world places on the coin, the seller of the product is still in control of what they will accept. I am not sure how using a cryptocurrency solves the problem of hyperinflation. It is still not going to be cheap or easy to purchase items in the areas these problems exist. I think your other points about access to banking and storing/transferring money are valid. It implies the person has a working mobile phone and access to a network though too.
teknologist 9 hrs "Using a cryptocurrency" doesn't solve the problem of hyperinflation in itself. However, Libra is backed by its reserve ("Libra Reserve") which is a basket of low-volatility assets structured to keep its value relatively stable. If my interpretation is correct, this basket can change over time so that it is always made up of stable currencies.
flatfilefan 8 hrs Being a Danish citizen and holding Krone at least in theory you may vote to control its inflation and claim social benefits from the issuer (Danish State). I mentioned the benefits because often they are financed through money printing by the government. With libra you won’t have those rights at all. One can argue that they basically get the same 4% as credit cards by depriving you benefits or voting power.
W-Stool 12 hrs If you're running some kind of IT infrastructure big enough for the whole world to use, you're going to want a cut of each transaction whether you are VISA/MC or Facebook's blockchain. Some sort of transaction fee is inevitable, even (or especially) on a private blockchain.
hnick 7 hrs
Visa and Mastercard are taking a 3-4% cut of every single consumer payment made in much of the world. That ends up being a very, very big number.
I'm guessing some of that goes towards chargebacks and other protections in the form of reimbursing purchases from stolen credit cards. It would be tough for me to trust any online replacement without a very firm and reliable appeals system.
rt2dap 18 hrs Visa and Mastercard have invested so I wonder how they might weigh in on the project. Also, the Libra-coin should also have a transaction cost associated but I would expect/presume it stands an order of magnitude lower than 3-4%
taurath 18 hrs Visa/Mastercard consider crypto an existential threat - the value add that they have in terms of consumer protection, middleman conflict resolution, and fraud prevention does not add up to that 2-4% level of value, and they admit that. Trust and the network effect keep them in play for now.
https://qz.com/1646097/what-does-facebooks-crypto-coin-libra...
Crypto transactions however, have not lived up to the "hype" of being truly cheap thus far. Visa/MC are positioning themselves such that the value they bring is not something that crypto can provide. We'll see where that ends up - I'd expect Visa/MC stock to move a bit if the transaction fees for Libra end up being sub-$.05.
TheSpiceIsLife 14 hrs This 2-4% being thrown around appears to be incorrect, as @dan1234 pointed out elsewhere here.
The Mastarcard fees appear to be 0.2%-1.65% as per https://www.mastercard.co.uk/en-gb/about-mastercard/what-we-...
oasisbob 6 hrs That chart is interchange fees, which is only a portion of the overall "switch" fees paid by the merchant.
benj111 16 hrs It isn't clear to me that you wouldn't still have payment processors anyway.
In the UK right now I can send money to your account nearly instantly, and for free. I wouldn't want to purchase anything like that though, I'd want to use some kind of card, why would Libra be any different?
TheSpiceIsLife 14 hrs Do we have any indication from Facebook that they intend to use Libra to massively undercut Visa / Mastercard for merchant services? I mean in the developed economies.
liminal18 12 hrs yes, their whitepaper heavily suggests that access to finance products for the poor is a big motivation behind Libra. However, it does feel a bit like white washing as the majority of the profits from Libra will obviously be the convenience of paying via facebook owned messengers etc.
TheSpiceIsLife 12 hrs The poor, even in developed countries, aren’t well served by the incumbents.
Visa and MasterCard are collaborating on the Libra protect.
For those two reasons I don’t know if it makes sense to say Libra is competing with the incumbents.
marcus_holmes 10 hrs The problem with Visa and Mastercard in the developing countries I've experienced is the banking system.
In Cambodia, you can only get a credit card from a Cambodian bank if you have a deposit with them that matches your credit limit (i.e. to get a card with a $5K limit, you need to maintain a balance of $5K in your account).
Most people cannot get credit/debit cards because the banks won't issue them, because they don't trust anyone and won't take the risk involved in issuing cards
I can see how Libra will solve a lot of frustrations for Visa/Mastercard working in poorer countries
TheSpiceIsLife 10 hrs What risk is there in issuing debit cards? Other than the obvious fraud potential, but that usually doesn’t originate with the card holder.
behringer 19 hrs No doubt if FB (i refuse to call them libra) coins become popular, when world governments limit crypto currency at FB's request, FB coins will no doubt be the only exception.
lwansbrough 14 hrs Zucc Buccs it is, then.
behringer 12 hrs Zuckerberg: Every Zucc Buck will be worth 5 British pounds!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shxiy7l5b_4
mdorazio 18 hrs I'm fairly anti-crypto, but there are a couple items in favor of #1:
A currency outside of traditional governments would theoretically be free of currency manipulation by those governments (ex. China and the Yuan)
An international currency can sidestep the artificial middleman fees and friction caused by traditional monetary exchanges. Ex. my friend who is currently studying in Japan wanted to get some money from her US bank account to Japan to pay for tuition and not only had to wait for banks to be open, but also had to pay exchange and transfer fees.
This one doesn't necessarily require an independent currency, but crypto also theoretically enables the fabled land of online micro-tipping for content creators, publishers, etc.
astrange 18 hrs
- A currency outside of traditional governments would theoretically be free of currency manipulation by those governments (ex. China and the Yuan)
You can't live your life outside your country's currency though. It has a built-in demand because you have to pay taxes in it. So you're going to have to buy some of it somewhere.
- An international currency can sidestep the artificial middleman fees and friction caused by traditional monetary exchanges. Ex. my friend who is currently studying in Japan wanted to get some money from her US bank account to Japan to pay for tuition and not only had to wait for banks to be open, but also had to pay exchange and transfer fees.
Try TransferWise.
vageli 17 hrs
- A currency outside of traditional governments would theoretically be free of currency manipulation by those governments (ex. China and the Yuan)
You can't live your life outside your country's currency though. It has a built-in demand because you have to pay taxes in it. So you're going to have to buy some of it somewhere.
Yes but then you can shop around for conversion and can keep the majority of your liquidity in a vehicle which is less easily manipulated but just as fungible (I am just arguing about the utility of a global, trans-national currency and not speaking to specifics offered by the Facebook coin specifically).
Currently, if you want to hedge against the Yuan but still want to buy goods in China, you don't have many choices. But if vendors accepted some other currency in addition to Yuan, you can convert to Yuan to settle debts with your government and keep your holdings liquid elsewhere.
aianus 9 hrs
Try TransferWise.
TransferWise doesn't work any faster than SWIFT -- if anything it's usually slower. They don't have any magic way to put money into your account on a "bank holiday" either.
I imagine Libra won't take Sundays off, at least.
astrange 7 hrs Yeah, but it's a lot cheaper. Japanese banks are happy to take more than Sundays off anyway - some of them don't have 24/7 ATMs.
CaptainZapp 1 hr
some of them don't have 24/7 ATMs.
And a lot (if not most) of them will not accept foreign cards, even if the ATM is accessible.
7/11 to the rescue, however.
semi-extrinsic 18 hrs
- A currency outside of traditional governments would theoretically be free of currency manipulation by those governments (ex. China and the Yuan)
As long as these three points are true: a) the notion of a stablecoin means stable relative to one selected fiat currency, b) the goods you are selling or purchasing are priced both in your local currency (which may or may not be the stablecoin peg) and the stablecoin, and c) that governments can still manipulate the ordinary currencies, then I don't see how you can be free from government manipulation.
thrav 18 hrs In the article, they mention that the price is pegged against 3 currencies (think they said: USD, JPY, EUR)
semi-extrinsic 17 hrs Well, you are still sensitive to manipulation in any of those three, and the governments in question are political allies.
FWIW, the EUR/JPY and USD/JPY pairs are historically highly correlated.
markphip 18 hrs You want to buy a product and the seller will accept the coin. The price/value of the coin is totally going to be determined by the seller and what they will accept for the product they are selling. Perhaps if you are in the US or EU and buying an automobile the price will be fairly stable/predictable but if you are in India or China and wanting to buy something from a local vendor the price/value is what the seller will accept.
liminal18 12 hrs being free of Government manipulation while desirable also has drawbacks as a corporate owned currency means it would be subject to corporate manipulation. Think Kong Bucks. Basically, corporate currencies mean not only do you shop at the company store, but you use their money too. I think the original premise of a government less people's coin via bitcoin is a better idea as it means the population takes responsibility for their currency.
smsm42 18 hrs
- The world could use an online independent currency
Maybe, but "Facebook" and "independent" hardly go together.
Unlike government issued currencies, any monopoly or control facebook derives isn't done through force
True, but the measure of control average person has over facebook is also close to zero. With government, you at least have courts, elections, Constitution finally... it is usually hard to go against the government, but it is possible and at least the presumption is that the government is there to the benefit and by the consent of the people (it's not very useful for a random citizen but at least that's the principle which can have some useful consequences sometimes). Facebook is there for whoever owns Facebook, and has zero obligations to anybody else. It could completely block you any time it wants to for any reason it wants to, could deny you use of any of its resources with no explanation needed and no recourse possible, it could change its policies any time with zero concern for your interests, etc.
I just wish there could be a deeper exploration of both the pros and cons.
What are the pros of specifically this Facebook proposition that can not be achieved without Facebook being in the picture?
rdm_blackhole 16 hrs
It could completely block you any time it wants to for any reason it wants to
As opposed to what banks did in Cyprus in 2013 when they seized the money on the savings account of their own customers and basically stopped people from withdrawing their money from their own bank accounts?
And said customers had no recourse at all against the banks helping themselves to their money?
floe 11 hrs In theory, the recourse is that the people can exert power over the banks by electing different politicians. Obviously, sometimes that doesn't work as well as we'd like, but there's not even such a possibility of recourse when Facebook fucks you over.
Macross8299 6 hrs
In theory, the recourse is that the people can exert power over the banks by electing different politicians.
Ah, but there's the rub. When every major political party is beholden to banking interests, "electing different politicians" is an almost-insurmountable task. And even so, is no guarantee that a new set of politicians won't eventually become corrupt and beholden to those interests either.
If "electing different politicians" is an insurmountable task, then developing an alternative, trustless financial system beyond the control of politicians becomes much more feasible by comparison. Hence the motivation behind great-great grandparent's comment about the need for an online independent currency. The context of 2008 and things like the TARP bailouts are very important to understanding the entire thought movement behind cryptocurrency as a whole. Hence, the hidden message encoded on the very first Bitcoin block 0:
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
tomp 4 hrs Not really... The move was forced on Cyprus by the EU, which controls the currency. Essentially the same as Facebook controlling the currency.
Lucadg 18 hrs Agree. A world currency in the hands of a few corporations is arguably worse than any government issued fiat. It will be more efficient and pervasive in both good and bad ways. [Edit: spelling]
Morizero 19 hrs
a strong anti-facebook bias
I can tell you from own experience that Facebook's dark patterns are incredibly frustrating at best, and at worst come off as malicious to the end-user.
For example, I refuse to download the Facebook app. When using the mobile website, it often shows me as having new messages. Clicking the notification then redirects me to download the app. Requesting the desktop site, however, shows no notifications and has no redirect.
How am I supposed to trust a company that puts me through that? Is it a bias when they actually lie to me almost daily?
csomar 18 hrs No, I think you misunderstood the notifications. I did at first. Basically Facebook shows you when someone read your messages. This shows up as a notification in messenger mobile but not in the web version. There are others too but I don’t remember the exact circumstances.
Morizero 13 hrs You're just strengthening my point - if I'm misunderstanding something, it's because Facebook has deliberately chosen to make it difficult to understand. That's further reinforced by the fact that they have an incentive to do so - increasing app installs.
an_d_rew 19 hrs Well, perhaps a deep exploration of the pros and cons are warranted, but...
FB has been caught willfully and negligently lying multiple times. (And yes, I'm aware that many banks have done the same.) Nonetheless, why would I choose to trust them over any other payment system?
What's Zuck's testimony to Congress going to be in five years? "We could have done better. We will do better. Who could have forseen this nightmare mess...?"
Amygaz 17 hrs My impression of what Libra is to FB is equivalent to that Silicon Valley episode where they did an ICO to found their business and get more users at the same time. I don’t believe FB’s altruistic intention for one second.
xenospn 13 hrs I can't wait for the 2025 3-season Facebook Special of American Greed.
what_ever 13 hrs Sure, but there should be a discussion about the tech and how it may/may not turn out instead of hur-dur FB bad. This is Hacker News after all not Privacy News.
trhway 19 hrs Those dumb f@cks trust me with their money...
simias 19 hrs
Unfortunately I think hackernews has a strong anti-facebook bias
And a strong anti-cryptocurrency/blockchain bias. I'd argue that both are for good reasons however, the burden of proof that this is actually something positive for the world is very clearly in the other camp as far as I'm concerned.
tomp 4 hrs I don't have an anti-Facebook bias (ok I do, but it's not relevant in this case), but I do have a strong anti-blockchain-as-a-buzzword bias.
If the blockchain & all transactions are not public, how is this different to having a non-blockchain based online currency (e.g. "Facebook credits")?
If the currency is pegged to USD, how is this different from just having USD in your PayPal account?
My hunch is, this is just a marketing/regulation-evasion exercise. It's not "currency" (it's crypto-currency) so they're not forced to follow the same AML/KYC/capital control/credit check regulations... Governments will quickly catch up though.
justinmchase 18 hrs There are a lot of possible nuanced conversations but I think that the rejection of FB-coin on principle is the simplest argument and doesn't require much nuance to achieve.
That principle simply being the principle of decentralization which is core to the concept and purpose of block chains. No single or cluster of large companies or governments can create and control a block chain without violating that principle and thus a rejection on principle is justifiable.
mathnmusic 10 hrs We remember Internet.org - a "free Internet" that conveniently left out all of FB's competitors like Google, Amazon etc. Nothing has changed with their tactics.
apazzolini 19 hrs 1. Another one?
In the sense that it'll likely lift other cryptos, sure. Is that actually a good thing?
Facebook IS the internet for many consumers in third world countries as their FB access is subsidized and free. I find it hard to believe FB isn't going to similarly force-push Libra.
Hacker News is biased against both Facebook and cryptocurrency, and for good reasons. I hope Libra fails.
feanaro 17 hrs I kind of agree with your first two points, but fail to see how Facebook's coin could ever be hoped to achieve this. In what fantasy universe will it be independent of Facebook's control? In what world is the inevitable accompanying tracking of all financial information, cross-referenced with a huge social database by a modern surveillance giant a good thing?
Unlike government issued currencies, any monopoly or control facebook derives isn't done through force, it's by making a coin better than all the other coins.
It may not be done through sheer force, but when people are making their local decisions, they usually do not have a complete perception of the global ramifications of their actions. The end result might therefore still be something very undesirable for ~everyone.
FridgeSeal 16 hrs
- The world could use an online independent currency
Could it? Why? Independent from who? Because watching the disasters and scams that go on in cryptocurrencies because they don’t have any regulatory oversight, doesn’t make me inclined to think an “independent” currency will be any better. Anyways, it’s not even independent, it’s controlled by a conglomerate of tech and finance companies and lorded over by Facebook, it’s about as un-independent as you can get.
- Adding stability to blockchain currencies and having that work on a large scale is a good thing
Because as we all know, adding yet another currency to the mix has functioned to stabilise things previously. Except now this time it’s run by corporations and lacks anything about what made crypto currencies interesting or worthwhile in the first place.
- Unlike government issued currencies, any monopoly or control facebook derives isn't done through force, it's by making a coin better than all the other coins. Other people are still free to make their competing coins.
In theory, yes; in reality, no. Humans are not creatures of perfect rationality that balance up all their options and make informed, ideal decisions at every point. The crypto currency market has been the perfect example of this: huge fluctuations due to hype and pump-and-dump schemes. Coins unequivocally do not succeed on their technical or theoretical merit. Moreover, all things being equal, I think a crypto currency backed by Facebook is something that should be avoided with a 10 foot pole.
meerita 14 hrs "1. The world could use an online independent currency"
If it is owned, it not independent.
50656E6973 17 hrs
- Unlike government issued currencies, any monopoly or control facebook derives isn't done through force, it's by making a coin better than all the other coins. Other people are still free to make their competing coins.
Sure it has. Not with the traditional physical force of armies from the industrial, feudal, agricultural or previous ages; but rather with the psychological force of the information age, executed by armies of programmers and social engineers.
cs2017 13 hrs
I think hackernews has a strong anti-facebook bias
Is HN really more anti-Facebook than the general population? If so, why?
roberto 11 hrs
Is HN really more anti-Facebook than the general population?
Yes, definitely.
If so, why?
Because the general population cares less about privacy than HN. But I (not OP) think it goes deeper than that, and I've seen people here deliberately spreading lies about FB.
cs2017 3 hrs Interesting. What else, besides privacy concerns, could be at play?
throwaway84_TO 1 hr A little while ago I played with the idea that if the masses were convinced that breaking up Facebook (or Google, Amazon, etc) was a good idea and that it eventually happened - the surviving BigTech "shrapnel" would be less capable to stand up against a government seeking information or control over them.
A paranoid and overly Orwellian idea for sure, but interesting to play around with!
DoreenMichele 11 hrs Facebook never clicked for me.
I'm not really a proper programmer. I know a little HTML and CSS, but I seem to fit in here better than most places. I have a Certificate in GIS, I run my own websites and I seem to relate to the internet differently than most people who are into Facebook.
The comments I see on HN seem to generally agree with that pattern: It's seems like it's "just not my cup of tea" for a lot of people who are more computer literate than average. On top of that, the privacy issues have become such a big deal of late.
lmm 5 hrs I've heard it alleged that HN "top users" are disproportionately Google employees; if so that would explain it.
cs2017 3 hrs I'd be very surprised if that was so. People move often between the two companies, and in my experience speak of each other quite positively.
More generally, I doubt any employee of a large tech firm has so much loyalty and devotion to their employer that they would take to the internet to undermine a competitor.
mjevans 17 hrs I would prefer the solution to be GNU Taler:
https://taler.net/en/index.html
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Taler
(late 2018) https://www.coindesk.com/free-software-messiah-richard-stall...
(2016) https://news.bitcoin.com/richard-stallman-gnu-unlike-bitcoin...
ezconnect 15 hrs This is just another way to skim off a few cents on user transactions.
dooglius 18 hrs Unless I misunderstood, it's not independent as it's backed by fiat reserves.
ineedasername 18 hrs 1) I'm not saying that's wrong, but I don't think it has the self-evident nature you attribute to it.
2) Agreed, though I'd really like it to be someone other than Facebook that does it.
3) We already have all sorts of other currencies. Frequent flier miles spring to mind, which can often be converted for other use. If they're not popular enough to be universally fungible, then in your terms they're not a "better" currency. It's also not self evident that any coin will do any better.
choppaface 19 hrs
- Unlike government issued currencies, any monopoly or control facebook derives isn't done through force, it's by making a coin better than all the other coins. Other people are still free to make their competing coins.
But how do you define “better”? Bitcoin has shown you can have non-consensus about very basic things like the ledger and all chaos breaks loose. And what if it’s a large corporation driving non-consensus?
cat199 19 hrs
- The world could use an online independent currency
and how exactly does having a stablecoin backed by facebook and a consortium of other vc/bank funded corporations achieve this?
legohead 18 hrs Until cryptocurrencies can deal with 51% attacks they are a waste of time in my mind. The technology is interesting, and that's about it.
viraptor 15 hrs 51% attack applies to mining. Libra will not be mined. They have 33% attack on voting... but if 1/3 of the founding companies disagree about some transfer, they've got bigger issues than just that attack.
waynecochran 10 hrs If there is no mining, how does proof of work occur to create coins? I only have an understanding of how blockchain works, but proof of work seems like a necessary ingredient in any cryptocurrency system.
rahkiin 2 hrs Another comment in this thread says there is no proof of work. And that it isn’t actually a cryptocurrency.
jpmattia 19 hrs Again: A ledger that is not decentralized is a bank database, not a cryptocurrency.
As near as I can tell, Zuckbucks are nothing more than the JPMorganCryptocurrency but with a bigger consortium. The only difference seems to be who is given write privileges to the database.
andrewla 18 hrs The thing that separates this from a bank database is a small thing, but important, and that's that even the bank cannot reduce your balance in secret without your authorization, since transactions are signed and the ledger is public. That's because of the cryptographic primitives used.
I think in the end we have to accept that taxonomies are going to have rough edges because the map is not the territory. With Bitcoin as the canonical cryptocurrency there have been a number of experiments that have removed or added guarantees. A distributed, verifiable, immutable chain of history is basically git with a couple of extra features, so the lines are necessarily blurry.
Rather than arguing semantics, the main questions are to what degree it is censorship-proof, permissionless, and scarce. The third one is the one that is least clear from the description and whitepaper. It sounds like they're trying to get the first two as well, but the designation of initial stakeholders might make that tricky until they can transition to proof-of-stake.
ThrustVectoring 17 hrs
the bank cannot reduce your balance in secret without your authorization, since transactions are signed and the ledger is public
This capability is pretty pointless when the bank can indefinitely suspend your ability to make transactions. The ability to block transactions is an essential part of compliance with anti-money-laundering and other banking regulations.
jpmattia 17 hrs
This capability is pretty pointless when the bank can indefinitely suspend your ability to make transactions.
You beat me to it: Having cryptographically signed transactions simply does not matter when you have to submit the transaction to what Zuck calls a "validator". The validator will just refuse to validate if your address is on a blacklist.
The net effect is that the coins are frozen. And since this is a backed currency, the backing will then be reduced by the amount corresponding to the frozen coins. This has the exact effect of lessening a user's balance.
Naming it "Byzantine Consensus" in their white paper turns out to be surprisingly apropos.
quickthrower2 9 hrs Might as well use PayPal if that’s the case
camjohnson26 16 hrs Maybe we need to question whether the government should have the power to unilaterally block a transaction. Just because they’ve been able to in the past doesn’t mean we have to artificially limit technology to let them keep that power.
In the same way they used to be able to tap your phone, but now we can encrypt our calls and make that much more difficult. That doesn’t mean encryption should be illegal.
vageli 14 hrs
Maybe we need to question whether the government should have the power to unilaterally block a transaction. Just because they’ve been able to in the past doesn’t mean we have to artificially limit technology to let them keep that power.
In the same way they used to be able to tap your phone, but now we can encrypt our calls and make that much more difficult. That doesn’t mean encryption should be illegal.
The government has the power to unilaterally block any transaction in any domain, so long as they deem the transaction to have occurred in or whose parties are under their jurisdiction. I think that, generally speaking, it is rare for the government to cede jurisdiction over a domain once acquired.
kd5bjo 10 hrs
The government has the power to unilaterally block any transaction in any domain, so long as they deem the transaction to have occurred in or whose parties are under their jurisdiction.
The government cannot block cash or barter transactions. Instead, they can declare certain kinds of transaction illegal and then use the courts to punish anyone who engaged in an illegal transaction.
It’s a subtle but important distinction— to do anything against you, the government needs to present some sort of a case to judge and jury, and you have an opportunity to argue your side.
lazulicurio 15 hrs I think that AML1 laws were just an example. The point is that the validators have the power to block transactions. This could be due a government request, or because you posted something that Facebook (or one of the other affiliated companies) doesn't like. The actual reason is immaterial; the important thing is that currency is worthless without the ability to spend it.
1 anti-money-laundering
bongobongo 15 hrs No, we really don’t need to question that. Financial laws exist for a good reason. Nor should some private company have more power than a sovereign nation just because.
lacker 15 hrs No, we really don’t need to question that.
The main reason we do need to ask the question is that Bitcoin is currently effective at preventing governments from blocking Bitcoin transactions. Even if financial laws exist for a good reason, they don't supercede the "natural laws" of cryptography that determine which actions are possible. So the question isn't whether Facebook should have the power to do X. The question is whether Facebook should be allowed to do X, given that Bitcoin is already permitted to do so.
stale2002 15 hrs Would you say the same thing about privacy, or speech?
It is bad that there are private companies, that allow me to engage in free speech, anonymously, without the government knowning my every move?
camjohnson26 15 hrs Assertions aren’t proof, and no one said there shouldn’t be any financial laws. Do you have anything to add other than an unsupported opinion?
stale2002 15 hrs Well, there is 1 key difference. The validators can't do that in secret. If they start doing it, then everyone will be aware of it.
The inability to do this stuff in "secret" part is still useful.
cwkoss 17 hrs See also: the time ripple froze a founder's XRP so they wouldn't sell (and presumably cause a price crash)
https://insidebitcoins.com/news/not-so-decentralized-ripple-...
petre 10 hrs That could cause a crash by itself because it inspires loss of confidence.
darkpuma 16 hrs In other words: Those who can destroy a thing, control a thing.
TazeTSchnitzel 17 hrs
even the bank cannot reduce your balance in secret without your authorization
Uh, neither can my Traditional Legacy Bank™ if I ask for regular statements?
I suppose you could argue they could lie to me about the actual amount. Well, then I will just sue them for the money.
andrewla 14 hrs I just mean that your funds at the bank can be seized without your assent for numerous reasons - civil judgements, asset forfeiture, etc., and given to someone else.
ajxs 11 hrs The reasons you list are the bank complying with the law. Civil judgements and asset forfeiture are legal matters where the court has decided that your assets are declared forfeit in order to make reparation for some legal matter. Presenting this as proof of your money's insecurity in a traditional banking institution is incredibly disingenuous. The fact that your bank complies with the laws of your country is just more proof of why traditional financial institutions would be more trustworthy than a consortium of tech giants.
swift532 3 hrs What can also happen with banks is that they forbid you from withdrawing more than a certain amount, or take x% from the top of every account because of economic issues.
gruez 13 hrs So instead of seizing your funds, they'll freeze your coins, then mint new ones to pay your creditor.
SomeOldThrow 17 hrs Ultimately you’re still beholden to private corps to transact at all, and transactions will be tied to your id, so I don’t see this having any benefit over bank-sourced transactions at all.
tim58 15 hrs
any benefit over bank-sourced transactions at all
I see a few benefits, but nothing on the order of the full potential of crypto.
Your FacebookCoin value is a collection of the world's currency value and not tied to a single goverment currency. It's more likely that {Single Fiat Currency} experiences hyperinflation than {Collection of Fiat Currencies} thus some of your risk is mitigated. Most individuals hold the majority of their wealth in a single currency, or in assets that are sold for a single currency (NYSE transactions are completed in USD, same with US based real-estate.)
Transaction fees can potentially be lower than incumbents. This is probably going to be especially true with person-to-person international transfers and could big a huge win for third world startups dealing in digital services.
The barrier to entry will, in all likelihood, be significantly lower than traditional banks. I've known people with a credit score so low they couldn't open a bank account. I've meet people with anxiety of using a debt card because of over withdrawal fees.
kerng 15 hrs If it's centralized the bank/consortium can do whatever they want. Your transaction might just disappear if the consortium decides that today is a good day to do so.
polyomino 16 hrs How can you be confident that the ledger that you're presented with now will be valid later?
This is what bitcoin does that none of these giftcard systems do.
ilaksh 19 hrs Correct.
Libra coin is backed by Visa. The whole point of cryptocurrency to avoid having to go through middlemen like Visa or even require banks.
This is a way for the intermediaries to cash in on the cryptocurrency hype and squash it before cryptocurrency payments become mainstream. They want to insert their own thing that looks like a cryptocurrency but will allow them to continue to profit from and control the exchange of money.
It will become a central point of control by providing many governments a convenient one-stop shop for their spying and interference over people's business.
andrewla 18 hrs
The whole point of cryptocurrency to avoid having to go through middlemen like Visa or even require banks.
"Whole point" is speaking for a whole lot of people who may not share your views. Certainly circumventing banks was an important founding concept, but circumventing central banks is arguably much closer to the goal.
There's no reason why credit cards shouldn't exist denominated in Bitcoin -- they provide easy access for consumers to obtain unsecured credit. There's no reason why banks (even fractional reserve banks) shouldn't have accounts denominated in Bitcoin -- they provide an easy path for consumers to issue credit.
Opinions may vary on this, but if Bitcoin (or another decentralized cryptocurrency) succeeds the way that people want, I don't see any way to stop these things from happening. People are willing to pay interest on loans; other people want to earn low-risk interest on capital.
The thing that will change is that hopefully without central banks consumers will have to realize that depositing money in banks is not risk-free. And hopefully society will learn this as well and we'll move out of the cronyism/free-money regime that we've been stuck in for the last hundred years or so.
nosuchthing 18 hrs Presumably people wouldn't want a cryptocurrency as plutocratic and centralized as Bitcoin has become. Some lessons were learned with BTC as an experiment, and as we can see there's evolution taking place and plenty of more advanced alternatives are making prior software like bitcoin obsolete.
It's especially troubling how centralized the minting and mining has become. And it's easy to forget there's the problem with energy consumption related to the PoW algorithm eating almost 1% of the entire world's energy simply for an accounting database.
The major reason you don't see payment processors dealing with cryptocurrencies is because the major usecase for most cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Monereo, and Ethereum is money laundering.
One important point: if we actually include all 7 billion
people on the earth, most of whom have zero BTC or
Ethereum, the Gini coefficient is essentially 0.99+. And
if we just include all balances, we include many dust
balances which would again put the Gini coefficient at
0.99+. Thus, we need some kind of threshold here. The
imperfect threshold we picked was the Gini coefficient
among accounts with ≥185 BTC per address, and ≥2477 ETH
per address. So this is the distribution of ownership
among the Bitcoin and Ethereum rich with $500k as of July
2017.
In what kind of situation would a thresholded metric like this be interesting? Perhaps in a scenario similar to the ongoing IRS Coinbase issue, where the IRS is seeking information on all holders with balances >$20,000. Conceptualized in terms of an attack, a high Gini coefficient would mean that a government would only need to round up a few large holders in order to acquire a large percentage of outstanding cryptocurrency — and with it the ability to tank the price.
With that said, two points. First, while one would not want a Gini coefficient of exactly 1.0 for BTC or ETH (as then only one person would have all of the digital currency, and no one would have an incentive to help boost the network), in practice it appears that a very high level of wealth centralization is still compatible with the operation of a decentralized protocol. Second, as we show below, we think the Nakamoto coefficient is a better metric than the Gini coefficient for measuring holder concentration in particular as it obviates the issue of arbitrarily choosing a threshold.
...However, the maximum Gini coefficient has one obvious issue: while a high value tracks with our intuitive notion of a “more centralized” system, the fact that each Gini coefficient is restricted to a 0–1 scale means that it does not directly measure the number of individuals or entities required to compromise a system.
Specifically, for a given blockchain suppose you have a subsystem of exchanges with 1000 actors with a Gini coefficient of 0.8, and another subsystem of 10 miners with a Gini coefficient of 0.7. It may turn out that compromising only 3 miners rather than 57 exchanges may be sufficient to compromise this system, which would mean the maximum Gini coefficient would have pointed to exchanges rather than miners as the decentralization bottleneck.
Conversely, if one considers “number of distinct countries with substantial mining capacity” an essential subsystem, then the minimum Nakamoto coefficient for Bitcoin would again be 1, as the compromise of China (in the sense of a Chinese government crackdown on mining) would result in
51% of mining being compromised.
- https://news.earn.com/quantifying-decentralization-e39db233c...
andrewla 17 hrs I'm not defending Bitcoin as the ultimate cryptocurrency; I think it's inarguable that it remains the most empirically successful so far. Whether that's first-mover advantage, network effects, a hardware-capable PoW function, or that it struck closer to the right balance of concerns, who knows?
I don't agree that the energy consumption is a real concern because we don't have a comparison here for what other currencies cost. The cost seems like it should be fairly efficient because there are competing uses for energy.
I'm not sure exactly what the quoted text is trying to say or how it is relevant. I guess towards the notion of "decentralization"? What I would say here is that the reality is that we don't know the gini coefficient of a single thing in the universe except goods that are extraordinarily scarce (like "Mona Lisa paintings"). The estimates for these things for real-world currencies are laughably bad; they are based on self-reported statistics and upsampling, and they rarely reflect the actual scarce good -- effectively M0 of a single currency, which is a number we don't even have for Bitcoin because exchanges represent aggregated possession rather than actual ownership. So my point here is that yes, maybe that Gini coefficient looks bad, but it's the first time that we've even had a moderately realistic look at what a Gini coefficient looks like. Maybe they all look like this -- maybe gold is .99+, maybe Dollars are .99+, maybe Euros are .99+, maybe cigarettes in prison are .99+? Nakomoto coefficient is even more immeasurable for anything but cryptocurrencies, and also disregards aggregated records of deposits.
woah 16 hrs Bitcoin is not inarguably the most successful cryptocurrency. It has completely failed at its stated aim of facilitating payments, and cannot coordinate the necessary technical changes for that to be realistic. It has also failed as a platform for programmable money, since its programming language is almost impossible to work with, and once again, it has been unable to coordinate the necessary changes to implement a working language.
What is “the most successful cryptocurrency”? I don’t know, but I would vote for one of those that set out as a development platform, and have successfully ignited a huge amount of experimentation on novel financial and organizational instruments (although their value may be unfounded).
AndrewUnmuted 11 hrs This confuses me. I make multiple payments every month in bitcoin to fund various web services (i.e. tarsnap, gandi). In fact, I've never had an issue with a bitcoin payment going through. Ultimately, I find the process of paying with Bitcoin to be a joy. I hold my smartphone's camera up to a QR code on my screen, and BAM - payment complete.
Yes, most other cryptocurrencies provide the same thing. But Bitcoin provided it first.
wmf 19 hrs If Libra ends up with 10x more users than all other cryptocurrencies combined, who are you to say what the point is? The existing cryptocurrency space has spent a decade building something that a relatively small number of people are really passionate about but it's the opposite of what the masses want.
ilaksh 18 hrs In my opinion, the main thing holding back cryptocurrency is scalability. They are working on that. The other thing is just social momentum.
Popularity and merit are two completely different things. It waxes and wanes. The masses will adopt anything that is convenient and popular (regardless of whether its really great or not).
Look at the #1 Billboard song right now. "Old Town Road". This is the most popular song. Its "what the masses want". What's it about? "Can't nobody tell me nothin'" "Cheated on my baby" "Cowboy hat from Gucci".. Its teenage defiance, materialism, and "macho" unfaithfulness. What happens to be popular right now might mean something important, but it also might just be garbage as usual. (By the way, at the moment, it is popular for humans to create literal mountains of actual garbage.)
The people who created cryptocurrency said what the point was. Its to give us control over our digital money and remove the intermediaries.
People who know better should strive to make things that are worthwhile more popular.
mplewis 18 hrs You're really making a value judgment on how the world works in general based on Old Town Road?
ilaksh 17 hrs That was one example. Look at popular music in general. Or popular movies versus good movies.
Look at the example of social researchers creating a line of actors in downtown Las Vegas. The line went to nowhere. But simply by virtue of having several people in it, it seemed popular. So it grew in popularity to become a very long line. That went nowhere. The thing that was popular had no merit because it did not exist.
Or look at Juicero. Very popular with investors to the tune of $120 million.
atentaten 15 hrs Do you happen to have a link related to the Las Vegas line of actors experiment?
ilaksh 14 hrs https://youtu.be/k2F_7B_-FI4
ebog 17 hrs Scalability is a big problem, but it's not the only problem. Money accomplishes 3 things:
1) Store of value 2) Unit of account 3) Medium of exchange
It's not really very good at any these 3 things. The scalability significantly hurts #3, but even if you fix it it's super volatile, which are bad for 1 and 2. Not only that, but it's inherently deflationary, which is quite bad in the long term, but I guess that's really a secondary concern.
kristianp 14 hrs I agree with your point. I think Libra is likely to have more users than Bitcoin not long after it goes live. Libra will be easier to use than a credit card, let alone Bitcoin.
I can't find the citation, but I think Paul Graham said, make it easier to use and cheaper than the incumbents and you'll have a good chance of succeeding.
imaginator 19 hrs This sounds like AOL in 1997 saying "We are the Internet", when the real internet was accessed using Netscape.
ThrustVectoring 17 hrs
The whole point of cryptocurrency to avoid having to go through middlemen like Visa or even require banks.
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.
camjohnson26 16 hrs 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.
ljm 17 hrs My first impression when I saw this news was that this would be about as 'decentralised' as Tor is. Facebook (and pals) will always maintain significant enough control over the nodes in the network to both maintain consensus in the blockchain, and also to subvert whatever consumer-friendly guarantees they'll claim to make. No different to Tor and US spy agencies controlling enough exit nodes to defeat the purpose of Tor.
Facebook and privacy are fundamentally opposed, so based on known behaviour the currency itself is most likely a hook into more of its users' lives.
0xDEFC0DE 19 hrs Can you explain why the ledger being run by ~27 different entities is NOT decentralized?
How many governing entities (or validators; or people running blockchain servers) do you need before it qualifies as decentralized?
I'm wondering about your definitions, not defending Facebook here.
jpmattia 19 hrs
Can you explain why the ledger being run by ~27 different entities is NOT decentralized?
27 entities? Not decentralized.
$10M fee to run a node? Not decentralized.
Anyone can run a node from their computer? Decentralized.
Blockchain validity is determined by mass consensus? Decentralized.
51% of the hash power is considered an attack rather than a feature of the system? Decentralized.
Edit: Removed item about forking. That's probably more about decentralized governance than decentralized currency.
kolinko 19 hrs You may be confusing permissionlessness with decentralisation.
A system can be decentralised and permissioned at the same time.
jpmattia 18 hrs Fine, add that to my spec sheet above:
Need to ask an authority for permission to do something within the system? Not decentralized.
quest88 18 hrs No, the white paper explicitly states that plan to phase this out.
jpmattia 18 hrs Fine, add that to my spec sheet above:
Need to start your system with requirements about asking permissions? Not decentralized.
At some point, we need to recognize that playing games with the system so that Marketing can use the word "decentralized" does not change the meaning of the word.
baby 8 hrs or accept the fact that there is a spectrum of decentralization. It's not binary.
pgeorgi 19 hrs In other contexts "split up between a group of folks" (that may be open to newcomers or not) is sometimes called "federated", while "everybody has (theoretically) a voice in the outcome" would be "decentralized".
In bitcoin, everybody has a chance to voice their opinion on what the ledger should look like (nevermind how miniscule it is these days given warehouses full of ASIC miners). Libra has 27 designated peers, and somebody in that group gets to decide about number 28 (and, potentially, about the other 26).
camjohnson26 16 hrs And those ASIC miners serve a purpose, it becomes much harder for a state sponsored actor to develop more efficient mining technology to attack the network. And the miners who run the ASICS are the ones with the highest incentive to keep the network running strong.
JumpCrisscross 18 hrs
Can you explain why the ledger being run by ~27 different entities is NOT decentralized?
Many financial clearing houses are mutualised across many more members. It’s still a centralised clearing house.
Facebook is launching a shadow bank. It’s an old and recurring idea. In 2007 it was hedge funds, in 2019 it’s Facebook. Same schtick, new players.
captn3m0 19 hrs How many of those 27 entities are registered in US and bound by US sanctions?
camjohnson26 18 hrs Well 3 of the entities are Andreessen-Horowitz, Uber, and Lyft. Not exactly independent concerns.
kevin_thibedeau 19 hrs It's a self-imposed hegemony. Bitcoin is controlled by the consensus of all users.
LIBOR was "decentralized". Then we found out that they were all colluding together.
kristianc 7 hrs That's a good thing for Facebook then - most normal consumers haven't the foggiest idea about crypto.
Most consumers will care about, in this order, 1. Is my money at risk if I use it? 2. What's the cost?
Whether it's federated, decentralized or 'real crypto' is 98, 99 and 100 on most people's list of concerns.
ChainOfFools 19 hrs Unfortunately the "decentralization is a spectrum" crowd has already furnished the fintech narrative with the arguments necessary to justify calling this "decentralized."
The "decentralization" quality should not be used to describe any system that doesn't exhibit a permanent, irreversible systemic trend towards greater decentralization of all the levers, concentrations and bottlenecks of power within itself over time.
For this to happen, the natural tendency toward concentration of leverage would need to introduce a proportional net cost increase to the system, rather than (as it normally would) be the mechanism by which economies of scale accrue to it.
grey-area 18 hrs Bitcoin doesn’t fulfil these criteria either - the devs and miners have not become more decentralised over time, if anything more centralised. Of course it is far more decentralised than this ersatz cryptocurrency from Facebook in both spirit and actions.
However the number of people who want a decentralised currency (with the many, many compromises it requires) is globally very close to 0%, so despite wailing on HN about the true meaning of cryptocurrency, this is not a reason to oppose this Facebook coin.
There are much more pressing ones to oppose it IMO - handing control of your transactions and/or finances to an org as amoral and duplicitous as Facebook, or indeed to any global corporation or cabal thereof, is a very scary idea.
I sincerely hope this dystopian effort to impose a global corporate currency fails.
um_ya 12 hrs
I sincerely hope this dystopian effort to impose a global corporate currency fails.
By extension, I hope the effort to impose a global governmental currency fails.
gaogao 19 hrs Could you give an example of something with this decentralization quality as you described?
Spearchucker 19 hrs Mastodon. You can set your own server up and benefit from all othe other existing servers. Mastodon provides a decentralised service running on decentralised infrastructure. You can run your server as you see fit, because access to the wider network is federated.
Zuckbucks provide a centralised service running on decentralised infrastructure. Try add your own server to help run Zuck's blockchain...
Zyst 19 hrs Git comes to mind as well, I can go to Bitbucket or Gitlab and upload my repository with its full history in seconds. Or my own self-hosted repository if I wanted.
I don't agree with grandparent for what it's worth, just thought this might work as a reply to your question.
ChainOfFools 19 hrs Other than universal entropy, probably nothing. Though math is also decentralized, maybe even moreso, being independent of time. So maybe "nothing that is relevant on a human timescale" is closer.
I strongly suspect that what we have developed a habit of calling decentralization, as if this referred to a final state of a proposed coordination solution, is in fact just a temporary, transitional phase between centralized regimes.
miohtama 18 hrs Libra is a attempt to cut out issuer banks, as in credit cars issuance, out of the equation. That is why Visa/PayPal/Mastercard are on the board. It is less fees for the consumers, definitely better UX, and in a sense relief from the legacy banking woes.
wavefunction 13 hrs And more importantly for them Visa/Pay Pal/Mastercard aren't outflanked by their own competitors. There's little noble to this endeavor by these characters.
hjk05 5 hrs True, but the significant difference is that banks are not allowed to print dollar bills without control(they do print bills effectively but with controls). Similarly they aren’t allowed to just start putting credits on people’s credit cards while keeping a separate database to track real vs their issues credits.
But if that separate database is a distributed blockchain based database suddenly they are allowed to do this...
tim333 18 hrs
“JPM Coin,” a digital token that will be used to instantly settle transactions between clients of its wholesale payments business.
JPM is for internal use. ZuckBucks I can transfer from my anon address to your address by signing with my private key.
buboard 19 hrs The key here is the ability to exchange it for other coins. If Libra partners can block exchanges, they will use that power as soon as they are requested to by regulators.
colechristensen 13 hrs JP Morgan's is for people who trust JPM because JPM has a strong vested interest to be on their side. Morgan's product is money and moving it around.
Facebook's product is you.
cryptica 17 hrs It is kind of decentralized in the sense that no single company can manipulate the ledger but it's definitely not decentralized in terms of wealth ownership.
JumpCrisscross 18 hrs
Zuckbucks are nothing more than the JPMorganCryptocurrency
It’s a shadow bank. Hedge funds did it in 2007. Facebook is doing it in 2019. Same schtick, new faces.
ChainOfFools 18 hrs Gotta hide that inflation somewhere! /s
that's a shadow /s
beezischillin 1 day I would never ever ever ever trust PayPal, Spotify, Mastercard and the likes to manage my money.
It simply sounds like lots and lots and lots of happy little "accidents" and "bugs" waiting to happen for political opponents as they lose their livelihoods. The people who came up with the whole "Manifest Observable Behavior" and random "Suspended for Breach of Community Standards" violations have no place around anyone's money.
It's not even related to protecting a specific political ideology, we can see daily how these companies treat users regardless of any specific belief or opinion on politics. I would rather not get / see anyone deplatformed from owning money should something like this become big.
drcode 23 hrs The important question isn't what you or I will do, but what the 90% of people will do who don't care about privacy/oligopolies.
omeid2 13 hrs Won't take long for people to realize, unlike other "new" utilities like social media people, generally, have a reasonable grasp of the value of money and the risk of it, mostly because they have experienced it. relatively, very few people experience the wrong end of the technocratic-sanctions stick.
tastygreenapple 19 hrs I'm sure they'll care once someone loses their zuccbuccs for saying "Men are trash".
Bakary 47 mins Isn't Facebook PR generally oriented towards placating the more SJW themes? Before the Cambridge Analytica stuff came to light, they were the establishment left's darling.
WhiteOwlLion 19 hrs Seems like having the right to be a jerk is important for financial independence.
shrimp_emoji 17 hrs Manifest observable behavior is just an evidence-based way to determine breach of policy0. It's literally the most rational way to go about enforcing policy.
Insofar as suspensions seem "random" because they're done by fast and loose algorithms (which are the only enforcement mechanism that scales), I agree though: that shit sucks, and it affects many sides. Many sides.
When Zuckerberg was in front of Congress, he was repeatedly scolded by Congresspeople for not doing enough to remove bad stuff. He responded by saying that there's too much bad stuff for humans to keep track of, and that Facebook is working really hard on AI capable of handling it. Yay.
With the long-awaited Libra white paper, Facebook is showing off its blockchain smarts, and making a bid for crypto credibility.
Released Tuesday morning, the 29-page paper describes a protocol designed to evolve as it powers a new global currency. More than a year in the making, the document opens by trumpeting the new blockchain’s ambitious goal:
“The Libra Blockchain is a decentralized, programmable database designed to support a low-volatility cryptocurrency that will have the ability to serve as an efficient medium of exchange for billions of people around the world.”
As a first step toward achieving the “decentralized” part, the protocol has been turned over to a new organization, the Libra Association, whose members will hold separate tokens allowing them on-chain voting rights to govern decisions about Libra.
“Over time, it’s designed to transition the node membership from these founding members who have a stake in the creation of the ecosystem to people who hold Libra and have a stake in the ecosystem as a whole,” Ben Maurer, Facebook’s blockchain technical lead, told CoinDesk in an exclusive interview.
In short, Libra is designed to be a high throughput, global blockchain, one that’s built with programmable money in mind but limits how much users can do initially as it evolves from prototype to a robust ecosystem.
Unlike many other blockchains, Libra seems laser-focused on payments and other financial use cases for consumers.
But the white paper itself seems geared to demonstrate both Facebook’s proposed advances to the science of distributed consensus and its appreciation for what has been built so far.
Indeed, over the last several months, many sources told CoinDesk they had visited Facebook to share their perspective on decentralized technology. The company has done a lot of homework.
And now it has created a new language for writing commands on its blockchain, called Move, and opened its software to public inspection.
“To validate the design of the Libra protocol, we have built an open-source prototype implementation — Libra Core — in anticipation of a global collaborative effort to advance this new ecosystem,” the white paper states.
“It’d be sort of presumptuous for us to say we’re creating an open environment and then say, ‘Well, but we’ve set everything in stone,’” Maurer told CoinDesk. “It’s a paper that requests feedback.”
Mix and match
Libra’s designers have picked what they see as the best features of existing blockchains while providing their own updates and refinements.
From the perspective of the blockchain itself, you don’t exist. Only public-private key pairs exist. The white paper states: “The Libra protocol does not link accounts to a real-world identity. A user is free to create multiple accounts by generating multiple key-pairs. Accounts controlled by the same user have no inherent link to each other.”
Initially, the consensus structure for Libra will be dozens of organizations that will run nodes on the network, validating transactions. Each time consensus is voted on for a new set of transactions, a leader will be designated at random to count up the votes.
Libra opts to rely on familiarity rather than democracy to choose the right entities to establish consensus in the early days. “Founding Members are organizations with established reputations, making it unlikely that they would act maliciously,” the white paper states. These are entities range from traditional payment networks (Mastercard, Visa) to internet and gig-economy giants (eBay, Lyft) to blockchain natives (Xapo) to VCs (Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital).
The only entities that can vote at the outset are Founding Members. These members hold Libra Investment Tokens that give them voting rights on the network, where they can make decisions about managing the reserve and letting new validators join the network.
The governance structure is built into the Move software from the start, and like Tezos it is subject to revision over time. Updates will be essential as it adds members and evolves from what’s more like a delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) system (such as EOS or steem) to a fully decentralized proof-of-stake ecosystem.
In a number of ways, the white paper defines interesting ways in which its users can interact with the core software and data structure. For example, anyone can make a non-voting replica of the blockchain or run various read commands associated with objects (such as smart contracts or a set of wallets) defined on Libra. Crucially, Libra’s designers seem to agree with ethereum’s that running code should have a cost, so all operations require payment of Libra as gas in order to run.
Unlike ethereum, Libra makes two important changes in its smart contracts. First, it limits how much users can do on the protocol at first (the full breadth of Move’s features are not yet open). Second, it breaks data out from software, so one smart contract (what Move refers to as a “module”) can be directed at any pool of assets, which Move calls “resources.” So one set of code can be used on any number of wallets or collections of assets.
“Over time, membership eligibility will shift to become completely open and based only on the member’s holdings of Libra,” the white paper promises, describing a path to real permissionless-ness.
Meanwhile, the paper dismisses the approach of the blockchains with the longest track record (namely bitcoin), stating, “We did not consider proof-of-work based protocols due to their poor performance and high energy (and environmental) costs.”
Blockchains that build in purposeful burning of tokens became very influential last year. Binance, the world’s leading exchange, created the BNB token, with which users could pay trading fees at a discount. Binance led the way to token bonfires, regularly burning a significant portion of its profits paid in BNB.
Libra won’t use burning to enhance the value of its coin. Rather (as with collateralized stablecoins such as tether), tokens will be issued and burned constantly, as the association responds to demand shifts for its reserve, with no supply maximum or minimum supply.
A lesser-known protocol, Coda, was one of the first to make its ledger disposable. Users only need to hold a proof of the last block, which they can easily check on a smartphone to be sure they are interacting with a valid ledger.
Similarly, on Libra, “historical data may grow beyond the amount that can be handled by an individual server. Validators are free to discard historical data not needed to process new transactions.”
EOS launched without its approach to governance well defined, which yielded complications down the road. Similarly, Libra promises to decentralize, but there’s nothing that inherently forces its members to do so.
Work in progress
Other matters are left undecided as well. For example, the storage of data.
“We anticipate that as the system is used, eventually storage growth associated with accounts may become a problem,” the white paper says. The document anticipates but does not define a system of rent for data storage.
It cites a number of examples of other open questions, such as how best to maintain security as more validators join the network, how often the pool of validators can change and how modules can be updated safely.
As the paper admits:
“This paper is the first step toward building a technical infrastructure to support the Libra ecosystem. We are publishing this early report to seek feedback from the community on the initial design, the plans for evolving the system, and the currently unresolved research challenges discussed in the proposal.”
Many cryptocurrency buffs woke up today like it was Christmas morning. Facebook finally released the Libra White Paper, and many of us couldn’t wait to unwrap what it had in store.
libra logo libra logo LIBRA.ORG
For those of us who don’t like reading white papers or have been asleep for the last month, here is a TL:DR on the new hottest trend in crypto.
Facebook is in crypto?
Yes, five years in the making. In 2014, Facebook hired former PayPal president David Marcus to run its Messenger app. Marcus was no stranger to blockchain as an advisor to Coinbase, and was subsequently asked to run Facebook’s new blockchain group. In December of 2018, Facebook announced a WhatsApp stablecoin integration in the works, with a focus on India, a market with over $69 billion in remittances. Reports of a new cryptocurrency by social media giant Facebook have been circling for most of 2019, promising to be the most widely used digital coin to date.
What is Libra?
In May of this year, Facebook registered Libra Networks LLC in Geneva, Switzerland, one of the most friendly regulatory environments for cryptocurrency projects, to create a new digital currency Libra. Libra was positioned as the new cryptocurrency for the everyday online consumer, backed by one of the largest companies in the world.
In its highly anticipated white paper, the Libra Association announced that “Libra’s mission is to enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.” The new digital currency will be built on the Libra Blockchain and fully backed by the Libra reserve, a basket of fiat currencies and ‘other assets’. The project claims to be decentralized and governed by the Libra Association.
What does the Libra coin do?
Libra will be used for peer to peer payments,commerce (online AND brick-and-mortar) and applications & gaming. The Libra White Paper states that, “The world truly needs a reliable digital currency and infrastructure that together can deliver on the promise of “the internet of money.””
In addition, the Libra Blockchain will be open-source, allowing developers to build on it.
Why do we need Libra?
The white paper was not very unique in its problem statement, citing that 1.7 billion adults globally remain outside of the financial system and that Libra will help connect the world in a unified financial ecosystem.
Screen capture from the Libra White Paper. Screen capture from the Libra White Paper. LIBRA.ORG What is the Libra Association?
The Libra Association is an independent, not-for-profit membership organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. “Members of the Libra Association will consist of geographically distributed and diverse businesses, nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions.”
Founding members include:
Payments: Mastercard, PayPal, PayU (Naspers’ fintech arm), Stripe, Visa Technology and marketplaces: Booking Holdings, eBay, Facebook/Calibra, Farfetch, Lyft, MercadoPago, Spotify AB, Uber Technologies, Inc. Telecommunications: Iliad, Vodafone Group Blockchain: Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Inc., Xapo Holdings Limited Venture Capital: Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures Nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions: Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women’s World Banking Facebook is rumoured to be seeking $1B for the project with plans to bring on new partners in addition to those named. Reports state that each partner invested $10M USD, which granted them their own node in the ecosystem. One of the largest challenges for cryptocurrencies has been adoption. Facebook leapfroged this challenge by building on its own already existing user base (2.4 billion monthly active users and counting) AND by combining it with those of the Libra Association.
Payment networks have anticipated a challenge to the existing payment ecosystems from the e-commerce and social media space. With many of these payment networks joining the Libra Association, it is clear that they would rather participate in the upside of Libra rather than compete with it directly.
Is Libra centralized?
With the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, where the analytics firm misused data of over 50 million Facebook users, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerburg has been criticized for grossly misusing his power as the keeper of our personal data. Although Zuckerburg has made several promises to make Facebook act more responsibly going forward, many users have lost trust in the platform.
One of the major draws of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, is the idea that no centralized entity (such as a bank or government) controls our finances. With its history of abuse of centralized power, many suspect that Facebook with use Libra as a way to gather extensive financial data on its users.
In anticipation of these criticisms, Facebook chose to not directly control the coin, but rather share the control with members of the Libra Association, with some members running nodes to verify transactions and maintain records. According to the Libra White Paper, “While final decision-making authority rests with the association, Facebook is expected to maintain a leadership role through 2019.” Keeping this network separate from Facebook’s platform also provides the social media giant with some regulatory cover. Critics claim that despite these measures, Facebook will continue to exercise considerable influence over the project.
What is Calibra?
A centralized subsidiary of Facebook, that promises to act independently, Calibra is wallet for all your Libra coins! Calibra will require (you guessed it!) KYC of all users. Calibra will be available as a stand alone app, and integrate directly into your WhatsApp and Messenger App. The app is primarily meant for sending funds peer to peer, as well as paying for everyday transactions. The announcement is vague on the question of fees, but promises for them to be reasonable. Let’s hope Facebook will do better than Kenya’s M-Pesa, which disproportionately charged fees on smaller transactions.
What about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?
It is unclear how the launch of Libra will affect other digital currencies. Although markets are responding positively, with Bitcoin reaching new 2019 highs, skeptics worry that so called ‘decentralists’ will sell out for a new and easy alternative.
The announcement sent Facebook Inc. stock rallying overnight, pushing prices up 4.84% as of the time of publication. Without a firm launch day set, the crypto community will have to wait and see how the rest of the Libra story plays out.
Forbes Special Offer: Be among the first to get important crypto and blockchain news and information with Forbes Crypto Confidential. It’s free, sign up now.
蘋果行政總裁庫克(Tim Cook)表示,矽谷科技公司需要為他們製造的混亂負責。
庫克周日在史丹福大學畢業典禮上發表演講。雖然他未點名具體公司,但提到數據洩露、私隱侵犯。
庫克指,最近科技行業似乎愈來愈以一種不那麼高尚的創新而聞名,相信可以在不承擔責任的情況下獲得榮譽。但他認為,「如果你建了一座混亂的工廠,就無法逃避對混亂的責任」。
他又提到自己對數據安全的看法,同時批評谷歌、Facebook和其他科技公司在用戶數據和私隱方面的做法,又稱數碼監控威脅創新,將創新扼殺在搖籃中。
庫克說,如果認為生活中的所有都可以被聚集在一起、出售,甚至在發生黑客攻擊時被洩露,並認為這是正常的、不可避免的,那麼損失的不僅是數據,做人的自由亦一併失去。
在回歸以來至為震撼香港的上個星期,我身在海外,但心繫香港,透過媒體及臉書知悉事態的一些發展,感到很痛心。星期六(6月15日)下午回港當天,趕及看到林鄭月娥特首終於宣布無限期押後逃犯條例修例二讀的直播,實際上就是擱置了。但是局面不見得就可這樣解決,因為經歷了此次修例爭議及由此全面發酵的民情,特別是年輕一代的發聲,我們應該十分清楚:香港從此不再一樣。
深層矛盾 莫再激化
我自從2017年中離任局長後,一直維持不評論現屆政府工作的立場。因曾身處管治核心的「熱廚房」,我完全明白今時今日政府施政之難、管治之複雜。所以我對眾多每天忠誠工作、服務市民的公務人員,心存感激。離任後我不會隨意指點政府裏的前同事,所謂不在其位,難謀其政也。但是當下的香港,正處於回歸以來最嚴重的管治危機,整個政府陷於四面楚歌,公信力和公權力遭到嚴重挑戰,我不能不打破緘默。
表面上事緣於政府提出逃犯條例修例建議。顯然政府錯估形勢,無論其背後考慮及法律觀點如何,現實上就是很多人都不明所以然。在社會各界廣泛存在各種大大小小的懷疑和質疑下,特區政府似不顧一切但求通過修例,遂只會加深人們的陰謀理論,認為定必有不可告人的政治企圖,這對修例本身就是一個道德上的否定。政府曾說,很多人誤解修例建議,若此,更不能在社會上不明不白下就通過修例。何況今次罕有地兩大律師團體及無數資深法律界人士均對修例存疑、以至持否定態度,若政府不能說服法律界,又怎能期望一般民眾接受呢?因此擱置修例是必要的,這乃一個按《基本法》須向特區負責的政府應有之義。
但是,修例爭議只是社會累積多年深層危機的爆發點。過去一星期的事態發展,已經超越黨派之間的政治角力與動員,或所謂「黃絲」、「藍絲」陣營之爭了,除了連續兩個星期天以起碼數十萬至百萬計市民(主辦單位說分別超過100萬及近200萬)蜂擁上街遊行抗議外,更有愈來愈多年輕人走出來進行抗爭,甚至包圍衝擊立法會,還有不同社群發動癱瘓性行動。普羅大眾、社會各界都躁動起來,對政府的信任陷入前所未見的低谷。站在前線維持秩序的警務人員處於不斷擴大的抗爭行動的風眼,承受了沉重的政治壓力,這些壓力本應由我們的政治領袖去承擔和化解。
際此關鍵時刻,各方均需冷靜下來,不要讓種種矛盾進一步激化,把結愈拉愈緊、愈拉愈死。我們無論情緒如何激動,仍需審時度勢,不因一時之急、一念之差而令香港陷入無法自拔的死局。面對劍拔弩張的局勢,我們必須避免發生另一場流血衝突。特區政府要從和解、包容、負責的方向去善後補救。
民心已變 回不了頭
我願相信大部分示威抗議的青年學生是出於焦躁、憤怒和恐懼而自發行動,他們關心香港的未來,因為這就是最終由他們這一代去面對的未來,他們怕失去其心中的香港制度和核心價值,卻苦無方法及出路(除了上街呼喊及一些自我行動),因為我們的管治體制經已失效,不能在高度自治下透過合理的政治制度和機制去解決分歧、尋求主流共識。特區政府對此絕對不能掉以輕心,不能使人覺得聽而不聞、視而不見。無論特區政府或中央政府,均不能以為「撤回」修例便可事過境遷,以為風暴之後,一切便「自然」地回復正常生活。因為民心已變,我們回不了頭。
2019年是香港的重要轉捩點。正如我的一代不少受到五十年前保釣反殖運動所政治啟蒙一樣,今天不少新生代的政治啟蒙始於2014年的「佔中」及「傘運」,再受今次對修例抗爭的洗禮。他們不認同政府的解釋、不願意疑中留情,因為他們不相信目前的政治制度、不信任其所產生的政府、以至不信任政黨及建制團體。經過此役,政府的正當性可能耗盡,日後管治只會更困難。所以,以為不再進行政改、只搞經濟民生便可走出管治困局,只屬「鴕鳥」心態,回歸20多年的惡性循環只會愈滾愈烈。
香港已經踏進新時代,究竟是最壞的時代、還是最好的時代,視乎我們的領袖及民眾何去何從。我回港前有朋友說:等我回來時,「香港已死」。這是何等悲情的申訴!我認為絕大多數港人(縱使當中政見不同)仍是和平理性、熱愛這個歷史異數的城市的,他們不肯認輸,他們既害怕、焦慮但也十分堅強。是這樣的堅強不認輸之力量,一直在種種困難和逆境中支撐着香港不斷前進。
我那一代的港人見證了香港的現代化成長,成為舉世知名的自由法治之都,我們不會讓香港倒退。我不希望年輕人只因心感絕望而抗爭,為何不可以為希望而創造力量?如何締造希望,是香港朝野內外、跨政治光譜的所有領袖皆應致力的。新時代要求新思維、新出路。悲情只會滋長更多的無力感和宿命觀。
理順民情、在「兩制」之間促進和諧互信、維護香港的核心價值,是特區政府的重大責任。為此,不存在面子或威嚴的問題。嬴得廣大民眾的信任,就是彰顯公權力的最大依靠,謙卑就是力量。
張炳良 香港教育大學研究講座教授、前運輸及房屋局局長
上周談及香港《逃犯條例》的國際關係視角,然後形勢每日改變,最終還是出現人命傷亡,令人哀痛。條例最終雖然沒有硬推,但正如上文所說,無緣無故樹立了內外太多對立面,不可能像沒事發生過,事實上,爭議期間引來的國際連鎖反應,早已不能回頭。香港的反《逃犯條例》群眾活動,聯繫跨立場、跨階層、跨世代,這比例的人數史無前例,不是任何「外國勢力」足以煽動的;反而是特區政府推出《逃犯條例》,偏偏出現在中國外交上最錯誤的時機,令全球都把香港當作最方便的「政治提款機」,北京莫名其妙輸掉一場戰役,可謂人算不如天算。在過去一段時間,曾通過不同渠道,嘗試對有關人士分析以下情況,不見得能有即時回應;只希望無論大家什麼立場,激情過後,也應明白香港已提前進入國際新冷戰主戰場,對周邊形勢,也有微妙影響。假如連上一波衝擊也沒能妥善應付,未來如何,更難安枕。
一、中美貿易戰,附屬出現「港元狙擊戰」?
不少朋友對《逃犯條例》為何在中美貿易戰的關鍵時刻推動大惑不解,因為即使沒有《逃犯條例》,香港早就具備成為國際金融大鱷狙擊目標的條件。事實上,中美「貿易戰」的重點從來不是字面意義上的貿易逆差;真正的貿易出口,也不是美國經濟的主菜。美國的真正「出口」其實有三︰一是「美元」作為國際貿易的主要結算貨幣,二是「美債」作為釐定「零風險」投資的標準,三是「美式金融」作為企業融資及金融管治的框架。因此維持美元在國際社會強勢、而且是人為的強勢,才是美國繼續稱霸的本錢,即使從經濟層面這可能犧牲若干本土貿易、與全球貿易穩定,也不是特朗普所在意。
香港作為特區對中國的最大價值,就是和美元聯繫的港元,以及被美國承認的單獨關稅區的身份。因此能夠在不大規模改變內地金融及外滙管理結構下,協助內地企業「走出去」,在金融市場吸納外資或發美元債。反過來說,也因為香港金融制度同時兼負美國、中國以至本地金融貿易要務,自然也是負擔兩國三地的政治及經濟危機,有着被衝擊的原罪。不少金融界朋友對對沖基金負責人Kyle Bass兩個月前的一篇警告「港元-美元」聯繫滙率早晚崩壞的文章印象深刻,無論是否認同那文章的觀點、能否洞察他希望製造self-fulfilling prophecy的可能性,大家都忽然記起一個事實:香港回歸後的金融風暴,當時索羅斯如何在包括香港在內的亞洲各地攻城掠地。當時還是純粹的投機市場行為,但今天多了中美貿易戰的國際層面誘因,香港單獨關稅區地位前景憂慮,還有自顧不暇的國家經濟,國際財團自然會考慮沽港元、買美元以求轉移資產及平衡風險,香港的外滙儲備是否足夠應付,就由20年來的偽命題變成真命題,也令投機分子有可乘之機。美國昔日如何對待日圓、1999年空襲科索沃對歐羅有何影響、然後怎樣以美資低價收購有價值資產,這些歷史,應該溫故知新。
因此,無論有沒有《逃犯條例》,在國際大形勢下,針對港元的新一波金融風暴,本已可能隨時出現,欠缺的,不過是一個合理化的理由。修訂《逃犯條例》所帶來的司法、人權等議題信心衝擊,以及其他國家對修例的反應,正好完美填充這個答案。即使今天暫緩修例,過去一周為香港社會帶來新一道,甚至是最深一道的信心傷痕,也為國際炒家預演未來,將香港的脆弱暴露於人前。這是筆者最擔心的危機。特區政府唯一應該做的是與民休養生息,暫緩發展計劃,全力備戰,這才是國家與人民賦予的責任。
二、「MFN模式」:美國未來的恒常「香港牌」
《逃犯條例》爭議期間,美國國會議員再次提出《香港人權與民主法案》,而這法案其實年前早就被提出,只是一直被按下不表。以筆者從美國政壇得到的資訊,關鍵一來是美國媒體對法案未有持久興趣,二來是某提案人家庭有其可能出現的利益衝突,三來在道德高地以外缺乏美國人直接利益攸關的切入點,所以昔日表了態,就「暫緩」推動法案。
但《逃犯條例》修訂,將美國及其他西方國家拉下水,令其在港公民被條例涵蓋,加上港人因修例所衍生的大規模和平遊行示威、激烈肢體衝撞,令美國政客及媒體找到關注香港的一切動機,由理想、到現實、到文宣層面,無一遺漏。更重要的是,不論是共和黨內以至在野民主黨,均可透過這張由傳統精英建構的「香港牌」,與走「反精英」路線的總統特朗普較勁。提出法案的盧比奧,上周大力表態支持香港反修例運動的美國「三號人物」眾議院議長佩洛西,提出修改《香港政策法》的克魯茲,都是特朗普在黨內外的主要政敵。反而特朗普上任至今反而對打「香港牌」十分克制,一來他當年在香港的經濟活動,可能還有外界不知道的後續,他曾提名在香港工作25年的基金經理Philip Bilden為海軍部長一事,始終是一大懸案;二來他對付中國已經有一手滿滿的牌,結果「香港牌」就讓國會主導,也符合一直以來港台事務的主要法案均來自國會的「傳統」;三來特朗普的「前國師」班農除了是另類右派舵手,另一個身份正是買空賣空的華爾街精英,和剛才談及那位唱淡聯繫滙率的Kyle Bass還是友好,與現於美國的爭議內地富豪郭文貴也是盟友,假如他有份操盤「香港牌」,恐怕不會像國會議員那樣打「開口牌」,只會製造突發危機。修訂《逃犯條例》,讓「香港牌」不但成了中美關係的「明牌」,還捲入了美國精英的內部明暗角力,未來麻煩,只會無日無之。
從法律層面,《香港人權與民主法案》假如通過,最大關鍵是提供了一個國會每年審查香港自治狀況的條件,去確定是否更改把香港與內地差別看待的《香港政策法》;也就是當美國有需要時,每年都可以打「香港牌」製造經濟、信心危機。情況對一些有一定閱歷的讀者而言並不陌生:上世紀九十年代時,美國每年均以香港牌作為衡量中國能否享有「最優國待遇」(MFN)的條件,也就是兩國每年都要循例講數,當年學者稱為「MFN模式」,分別不過是今天被審核的是香港而已。
三、美國重組後的「印太-香港」領導班子
《逃犯條例》爭議期間,美國公布了一批和香港相關的任命,首先是新任美國駐港大使史墨客(Hanscom Smith),取代以經貿為專長的現任總領事唐偉康。正如本欄多次講述,因為歷史原因,美國駐港澳總領事級別等同大使,直接滙報華府,選擇這時候公布新人選,很難不令人有宏觀聯想。史墨客是懂普通話的中國通,有留學日本經驗,是公開出櫃的同志,伴侶呂英宗是台灣人,曾在上海總領事館工作,這份履歷屬於「印太戰略」時代的外交官新貴,未來美國只會更把香港放進整個「印太」框架考量。還有新任副總領事侯偉業,在回歸初年就曾在香港工作,也有在波斯尼亞這個另類「一國兩制」處理美國利益的經驗。
不過最重要的還是此人:相當鷹派、職業軍人出身的史迪威(David Stilwell),終於在3日前獲國會通過,成為新任處理亞太事務的助理國務卿,也就是負責整個區域的最高層。筆者在夏威夷East-West Center當訪問學人時與其為鄰房,曾拜訪其像是軍事博物館的辦公室訪問,一言以蔽之,他是以軍事戰略處理外交的典型,戰略思維和外交官出身的傳統精英完全不同,訪問時他就對我說,在自由派外交思維主導的East-West Center,他幾乎是唯一的例外。美國印太戰略人員,正式在「後《逃犯條例》時代」埋班,香港未來再嘗試獨善其身,恐怕不可能。
四、印太時代,日本逐漸成形的「台港牌」對特朗普的博弈
特朗普的「印太戰略」,主要拉攏印度、澳洲、日本等亞太大國構成一個中國包圍圈,並以東南亞為樞紐,而在歷任美國總統當中,他大概是最沒有顧忌支持日本所謂「普通國家化」的一人。上月特朗普訪日時,登上日本自衞隊准航母加賀號,明言加強美日軍事合作,目標明顯是中國、北韓;但與此同時,其實美日也在進行自己的小型貿易「摩擦」,特朗普一貫是一手軟、一手硬的討價還價。日本安倍政府希望美國加持「普通國家化」,也不願意在貿易層面過分退讓,就需要顯示其他價值。因此,日本和台灣的特殊歷史淵源,乃至日本與香港的緊密經濟、文化關係,都成了日本政府的備用品。
客觀而言,和歐美政府相比,日本政府對香港《逃犯條例》的官方發言十分克制,一來是中日關係剛有改善跡象,二來G20峰會於大阪舉行在即,日本有自己的主場考慮,不願橫生枝節。但2014年以來,日本民間對香港的關注愈來愈高,「香港研究」在日本逐漸成為一門顯學,例如筆者的一位日本學界朋友最愛唱達明一派的廣東歌,對香港之熱愛相當澎拜,這類日本「香港通」愈來愈多,慢慢凝聚了一個圈子。這次《逃犯條例》爭議期間,不少香港網民對「條例通過後,日本可能不再給予特區護照免簽待遇」的猜測最緊張,而日本在香港的企業辦事處數目僅次內地,存在一定槓桿效應。相對於「香港牌」,日本的「台灣牌」則十分積極,這也是美日聯盟默契的一部分,這次修例卻令日本政客想到「兩牌合一」,並有地方議員參與了關於香港的聯署,除了是增強自身影響力,也是用來和美國的經貿談判討價還價。此例一開,也難以回頭。
五、中國「聯歐制美」戰略下,德國領導歐盟的「價值觀對冲外交」
《逃犯條例》爭議期間,德國於去年原來已給予涉及年前旺角案的兩名香港青年難民身份,引來特區政府高調批評;坊間對德國此舉應否進行有兩極意見,但我們應注意的是這事適逢此時被公布,固然是二人的主觀意願,但客觀上更配合了德國、乃至整個歐盟在中美貿易戰的策略:「歐洲式對冲」。
雖然美國政府多番要求盟友配合其針對華為的舉措,但歐盟各國面對5G時代,明顯希望在中美兩大勢力之間遊走,不願全面與美國合作,保留了讓華為進入市場的大量空間,同時也暗中鼓勵像諾基亞那樣的品牌乘虛而入,分一杯羹。以上政策純粹利益主導,但缺乏了一個漂亮框架;德國默克爾上台初雖然決意走「價值觀外交」,但自從習近平訪德簽訂大量訂單,這調子本來已輕輕放下,直到庇護劉曉波遺孀劉霞才重新被舉起。由於以德國為首的歐洲大國知道中國需要在經貿、科技戰層面拉攏他們,自然希望得到更多經濟實力,但也必須和國內輿論、國際盟友交代。於是重啟「價值觀外交」,顯示自己不是只要「發大財」,就成了一個辦法。北京為「聯歐制美」投鼠忌器,兩害相權,對德國為首的「價值觀外交」只能以更寬鬆態度對待。由於涉案二人本身也是香港「逃犯」,在歐洲傳媒眼中,評論《逃犯條例》卻又天經地義,經過一輪訪問,無論北京、港府多麼不願意承認,他們在西方媒體配合下,逐漸得到了國際話語權,脈絡和5年前黃之鋒成了國際風雲人物,如出一轍。
從歐盟而言,「香港牌」也同樣如美國一樣,捲入內外明暗角力︰在社交媒體支持香港反修例運動的伏思達所屬的政團「ALDE」,正傳出與議會內第一大黨團歐洲人民黨協商,後者醞釀支持伏思達成為歐洲議會議長,換取ALDE支持人民黨提名的韋伯,出任歐盟委員會主席,屆時歐盟和香港的互動,可能更頻繁。歐盟3月發表的對華外交政策戰略文件,表明歐盟將中國視為挑戰歐洲核心價值的對手,也提到香港的高度自治需要得到尊重,而正是這些高調的價值觀表態,令德國等國對封殺華為態度曖昧,不致於成為西方輿論眾矢之的。何況高調反《逃犯條例》修訂,除了為歐洲提供了「不是親華反美」的表面證據,掩護另一面的對華務實政策,還在特朗普不重視價值觀之際,重燃了歐盟作為「道德規範力量」的方針,也可要求參與「16 +1」框架的歐盟成員國歸隊。
六、僑民外交:借《逃犯條例》爭議突破《維也納公約》規範的駐港外交官團
駐香港的各國外交官極多,境內有62所總領事館、61所領事館,如此陣容,為中國首都北京以外的任何地方所無。但他們對評論香港內部事務一直想當克制,北京以往也對這方面把關很嚴,例如曾在吉爾吉斯鬱金香革命期間擔任美國駐該國大使的楊甦棣(Stephen Young)後來到香港擔任總領事,外交部駐港特派員公署就曾以違背《維也納領事關係公約》、評論香港內部事務為由,對其發出警告信。但《逃犯條例》爭議是一個極罕有的機會,讓這些外交官找到評論香港的理由,因為條例直接涵蓋他們本國在香港的公民、商會,以這出發點評論屬於他們基本責任,就有了迴旋空間;據稱外交部駐港特派員公署將集體和他們會面釋除疑慮,原因之一自然是特區政府在《基本法》框架下能說的層次,根本不為對方感興趣。特區政府似乎並未為意當一條本地條例涵蓋外國商人、僑民,這就早已超出了純法律問題,而是開啟了一個危險的潘朵拉盒子,因為「保護僑民」是國際關係界眾所周知的「萬能Key」,很多本來可以歸類為「干涉內政」的行為,有了這個合理理由,就變得冠冕堂皇,例如美國干涉委內瑞拉是保護僑民、俄羅斯吞併克里米亞是保護僑民而起、中國駐各地大使館近年也加強了保護僑民的宣傳。
更重要的是,這次各國大舉評論香港開了不少先例,除了歐盟各國集體行動,英國、加拿大也是由兩國外長罕有地對香港發出「聯合聲明」,暗示了英國脫歐後啟動「英加澳紐小英聯邦」的可能性,這是借香港來進行其他外交工作的範例;其他外交官在上個月內的合縱連橫案例,似乎還有不少。《逃犯條例》爭議期間,由於特區政府始終未能成功釋除各國疑慮,乃至愈描愈黑,駐港各國領事之間卻因為需要直接交流而產生了更多工作關係。這個領事團的重要性在回歸後20年首次被激活,假如沒有一條涵蓋世界各國所有國民、又引起本地大量爭議的草案,是幾乎不可能的。
七、台灣選戰前,蔡英文或成最大贏家
台灣當局一直對直接介入香港事務十分克制,沒有意欲、也沒有能力,關心的只是借香港影射台灣現狀「抽水」。但《逃犯條例》以陳同佳案為「官方初心」,雖然矛盾重重,任何官方發言都言必台灣,卻意外令台灣當局得到評論香港的話語權,還為執政民進黨得到反擊北京的黃金機會。習近平主席年初的新年對台談話,明言以「一國兩制」、「香港模式」為統一楷模,自此香港成了台灣選舉的重要參考對象。蔡英文本來民望已跌至谷底,台灣朋友不少認為她連任無望,但通過連月來打的「反一國兩制牌」,加上各種坐擁行政資源的選舉手段,民望卻又極戲劇性回升,尤其是利用《逃犯條例》爭議宣示了堅定立場,找回人氣,在黨內初選期間,不時化身香港事務評論員,除了逆轉勝擊敗對手賴清德,還順道打擊了早前曾與林鄭月娥會面的主要對手韓國瑜。國民黨本來並不願高調批評「一國兩制」,但《逃犯條例》一出,黨主席吳敦義也不得不說「一國兩制全是虛言」以回應台灣民情;還有另一北京接受的候選人大款郭台銘,也在個人Facebook表示以「張開雙臂爭取港人移居台灣」為政綱;恐怕未來任何台灣政客肯定「一國兩制」和香港,都會成為票房毒藥。雖然不能說蔡英文勝出初選全靠香港,但「香港牌」肯定具有發酵民情的明顯作用,香港內政能影響台灣民情至此,也是史無前例。假如《逃犯條例》不是堅持以陳同佳案為「官方初心」,台方輿論不可能發酵至此。
由於陳同佳案這個藉口被發揮得淋漓盡致,理論上,日後依然需要與台灣當局商討對策才能「彰顯公義」,也就是賦予了台灣當局一個沒完沒了、可循環再用的選舉議題,「蔡英文或成最大贏家」,北京精密的對台部署,假如因為這件事破局,很多工作又要推倒重來。另一方面,台港關係近年本已相對制度化,但這次爭議,也連帶令雙方「經濟文化辦事處」的功能,以及其他半官方組織的功用大減,這些年來令港台關係半制度化的努力,就算不是一筆勾銷,同樣要重頭再來。
八、內交:假如香港不能協助「走出去」,由澳門到大灣區的連鎖回應
由於上述結構性轉變,導致中國能否長期利用香港「走出去」存在不確定性,北京必然有幾手準備。在國際關係角度,香港、澳門作為中國境內的兩大特區,有其明確分工,就是分別作為能與國際(特別是英美社會)完全接軌的地上、地下金融中心;官方定位澳門為「世界旅遊悠閒中心」,事實上只是枱面上的功能而已。這樣的結構分工,在世界並不罕見,例如筆者曾考察的塞班島,主權屬於美國、容許中國國民免簽入境、境內容許賭場運作、本土人口不多,基本上就是「澳門模式」。一旦香港的國際金融中心地位受影響、或港元-美元聯繫滙率不再,中國境內要吸引美元還有哪裏?就是澳門。澳門的重要性增加,而澳門政局相對穩定可控、「外國勢力」(特別是中國極希望拉攏的歐盟)的存在,也早有制度及默契,可能會得到意料之外的機遇;甚至更多擴大澳門行政版圖的「橫琴模式」,會以不同方式被考慮;而洽談中的賭場續牌花落誰家,也可能根據大格局有一定影響。值得注意的是,在《逃犯條例》一役,和香港特區沒有引渡條例的澳門,因為一位富豪的戲劇性介入,其實間接扮演了極關鍵角色;澳門本身也沒有通過與內地的類似條例,年前澳門政府懸崖勒馬,大概因為其地下經濟的國際元素只會比香港更受條例影響,這也是澳門政府罕有比香港政府更有國際視野之處。有了香港這次經驗,在可見將來,澳門的國際地位反而可能比香港更穩固,甚至可能像在二戰期間那樣,成為新冷戰的緩衝區。
此消彼長之下,香港的國際身份一旦弱化,或單獨關稅區、周轉美元的功能被廢止,削弱香港三大中心的國際地位,也難免直接影響整個大灣區的規劃。中山、深圳、廣州本來就對香港獲得例如「港人港稅」等「特權」頗不滿,部分民族主義者也認為香港的重要性每況愈下,更成為外國勢力影響國家穩定的負累,勉強忍下去,就是因為香港的國際身份能夠互補;假如沒有了,香港在大灣區也沒有了分工,上述這些內地城市的官員會如何看待香港,不言自明。未來「內交」層面,香港恐怕會更弱勢,比起前三任特首年代,不可同日而語,而其他城市藉此向中央游說不要「厚待」香港的工程,恐怕已經開始。
九、李顯龍接班人的機遇:中美新冷戰戰場撤離新加坡
經此《逃犯條例》一役,香港直接走進中美角力、新冷戰的核心戰場,卻間接令一些本來有機會成為戰場的地方鬆一口氣,乃至乘機獲利,最明顯的例子是新加坡。數年前,自從新加坡在南海主權爭議表態,中國一度打算以新加坡為突破口,期間發生的香港「裝甲車事件」、新加坡以「疑似情報行為」驅逐華裔學者離境、傳出中國資助興建「克拉運河」取代馬六甲海峽等事情,都令朝野大為緊張,擔心李光耀以來的「大國對沖政策」失靈,被迫要在中美之間明確靠邊站;屆時一旦局勢不穩,又可能直接影響國際金融企業的投資意願。這正是李顯龍在今年香格里拉對話發言的精髓:大國不要逼新加坡選邊站,下一句沒有公開說出的,就是「開戰請到其他地方吧」。結果香港《逃犯條例》爭議一出,整個地緣政治的壓力都轉移了在香港,相信在可見將來,新加坡的壓力會驟降,也不用再擔心成為中美新冷戰主戰場。而且不少金融界朋友告知,在過去數月,確有基金賬戶從香港撤退到營商環境最接近的新加坡,數目還不少,一旦形成氣候,雖然不一定傷及香港根本,卻會令新加坡的「亞洲首席國際金融中心」地位更鞏固,同時也令擔心新加坡成為中美磨心的市場憂慮,一掃而空。執政人民行動黨渡過了過去數年頗有暗湧的危機,李顯龍盛傳的接班人、現任副總理、財政部長王瑞杰可以視之為政績宣傳,也能夠一方面高調對華友好、另一方面乘北京無暇他顧,鞏固美國保護在國內的存在,順利接班,幾無懸念。
此外,還有涉及世界其他地區的一些觀察,篇幅所限,就不詳細列舉。總之,無論「初心」如何,這個案例,將會成為國際關係蝴蝶效應經典教材,一件最初不為任何人注意的事,經過連串失誤,除了逐步發酵為回歸以來最大爭議的本地大事,因為打擊面太大,超越了傳統反對派的同溫層,觸及整個香港商界、保守專業人士階層的憂慮,然後觸動國際神經,配合當下複雜的國際形勢,進而影響了全球地緣政治,一名作行政決策的香港人,有如此國際政治影響力,也是史無前例。已經走不回頭的香港,面對這個國際形勢,已經沒有不調節原有政策的可能,但具體又可以如何?
(下篇待續)
(編者按:沈旭暉著作《平行時空2 – 解構本土主義崛起的世界》現已發售)
歡迎訂購:實體書、電子書
179 oska 5 hrs 62
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/14/facebook-privacy-policy-court/
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20191870 Unable to load the content
https://theintercept.com/2019/06/14/facebook-privacy-policy-court/
不得不承認,比特幣已經成為年度表現最佳資產。
經歷了長達一年的暴跌後,比特幣終於在近期迎來了一波強勢升勢。截至五月中,比特幣已經連續上升十四天,目前比特幣價格暫報8011美元,此前曾一度攀升至8198美元。年內升幅依然高達112.1%,已經實現了double。伴隨着氣溫的逐漸升高,加密市場彷彿也開始從冬眠中甦醒,不少主流幣種當時的升幅均在兩位數以上。
美券商巨頭TD Ameritrade在CoinDesk二○一九紐約大會上表示,比特幣的價格波動並沒有影響到客戶對加密貨幣期貨的興趣,TD Ameritrade無數的客戶對加密貨幣感興趣。
目前的市場由炒作驅動,市場規模小,還不成熟。但是隨着愈來愈多的國家把區塊鏈定為國家戰略,由技術和市場基本面驅動格局日益明朗。
每一次變革都會誕生偉大的新公司,在一九九○年的互聯網泡沫中誕生了FAANG:Facebook、 Apple、Amazon、Netflix和Google這些巨頭,對於數字資產的未來,在數字資產領域未來也會誕生FAANG一樣的巨頭。
金融是百業之首,其應用場景包括數字錢包、貿易融資、房屋租賃、跨境支付和數位票據等,技術涉及衣、食、住、行等所有與生活息息相關的領域。全球的房產市場價值230萬億美元,全球股票市場價值70萬億美元,全球債務市場210萬億美元,三項累計超過510萬億美元,未來有可能會有100萬億美元的資產存儲在區塊鏈上。所以,十年後,區塊鏈成為十萬億美元產業不是夢。
最近比特幣的大升和前幾次最大的不同,就是機構投資者入場,實物交割的比特幣期貨一旦成形,ETF通過也指日可待,那時才是加密貨幣的春天。
香港特區政府強推《逃犯條例》修訂引來極大爭議,有德國傳媒刊出文章指香港陷入水深火熱之中,西方也有責任。文章批評西方政商界以往面對中國人權問題時態度曖昧,導致出現這種後果。
《巴登報》以「沒有人反對中國」為題發表社論,指香港的大規模示威無法撼動北京,一大原因是缺乏外界支持。社論認為起初北京似乎還願意遵守「一國兩制」的承諾,同時中國的經濟開始對外開放,政治上出現曙光,中國領導層甚至對西方民主產生興趣,令很多人抱有期望,以為香港可以影響中國。可惜事與願違,如今中共的專制政權前所未有地穩固。北京毫無掩飾地干預香港的政治,經濟方面也早已依賴中國內地。
另外,《圖片報》總編賴希爾特(Julian Reichelt)以「別與恐怖份子做生意」為題撰寫社論,文中提到當前德國將太多目光投放在環保、氣候等關乎未來的議題,卻忽視了人權這些當前要處理的事務。社論寫道:「在中國,德國企業的董事們迫不及待開設新工廠,同時又否認曾聽說過侵犯人權、勞改營等現象……在這個問題上,我們不應只討論如何應對氣候,也應該討論如何面對『人』。」
賴希爾特作出呼籲:「如果我們不再容忍對環境的犯罪行為,那麼我們也不應再容忍對人類的犯罪行為。如果我們想為後人留下一個更美好的世界,就必須思考一下現實政治的規則:不與恐怖分子做生意。」
一段關於Facebook(fb)行政總裁朱克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)的人工合成短片,本周初被上傳至該公司旗下平台Instagram(IG)上,片中他似乎就fb大數據的影響力發表偉論。截至周三(12日),該片累積逾2萬觀看人次,惟fb發言人強調,公司不會刪除這段短片。
fb強調不會刪除
該短片長約21秒,標題是「朱克伯格:我們正在提高廣告透明度」,片中的朱克伯格聲稱:「讓我們快速地想像一下,一個人完全掌控着數十億人被盜的數據,掌控着他們所有的秘密、生活和未來。我將其歸功於幽靈(Spectre),幽靈告訴我,誰掌握了資料,誰就掌控着未來。」
網站VICE報道指,該片由兩位藝術家Bill Poster和Daniel Howe聯同一家廣告公司Canny AI合作製成。他們在IG上表示,這段短片以Canny AI的視頻對話替換(VDR)技術製成,透過人工智能(AI)替換短片人物沒說過的話。據稱,該片剪輯自2017年的一段7分鐘短片,當時朱克伯格正在談論,俄羅斯干預2016年美國總統選舉。
IG 發言人說:「我們處理這些內容的方式,跟處理IG上所有虛假資訊的做法無異。若第三方核查人員將之標記為虛假內容,我們將把它從IG推薦頁面(例如Explore),以至hashtag標籤頁面過濾過來。」
佩洛西遭惡搞似醉酒
事實上,該段有關朱克伯格的短片,很有可能是對fb的一次考驗。上月底,該公司曾因拒絕刪除關於美國眾議院議長佩洛西(Nancy Pelosi)一段合成短片而遭抨擊。片中佩洛西被竄改說話聲音,語速被刻意放慢,聽起來口齒不清,被多數網友質疑是否喝醉。
片段一度在fb、YouTube及Twitter上瘋傳,隨後YouTube及Twitter先後移除,惟fb繼續保留該短片。當時fb的發言人指出,公司沒一項政策規定,在平台發布的訊息必須真實,但會大幅減少其曝光率。
有說內地千禧年後出生的人全是潛在千萬富翁,因為父母同是獨生子女,又是祖父母們的唯一寄望,萬千寵愛在一身,亦是所有家財的唯一繼承人,未來可能有五六套房子在手。以現在內地房價高企,身家有千萬元只能說是保守估計。不過,內地近日發布的一份人口研究報告,或許會推翻這個說法。
中國近年出生人口大幅減少,人們生育意欲下降。2018年出生人口為1523萬人,較2017年大降200萬人,創1949年以來的第二低。2016年開放「全面二胎」政策後,出生人口曾攀升至1786萬人,但之後便連續兩年下滑,政策效應急速消散。
1949年以來,內地曾出現三波嬰兒潮,七十年代之前是鼓勵生育,生育率在6左右(即每位婦女生6個嬰兒),至九十年代已降至2左右,再降至2010年後的1.5,已不足以補充人口需要。不僅遠低於2.45的全球平均水平,也低於1.67的發達國家水平。
年齡中位數升至37歲
低出生率有什麼不好?勞動力萎縮,人口紅利消失,還有老齡化加劇。內地勞動人口峰值早在2010年見頂,預計到2050年,勞動人口將比2018年少四分之一。內地人口年齡中位數從1980年的22歲,上升至2015年的37歲,預計2030年將升至43歲。
分母減少但分子增加,到2050年,每3.3個中國人便有一個是65歲以上的老人,不僅令經濟缺乏增長動力,社會養老負擔也日漸沉重。現時黑龍江等部分省份,養老金已入不敷支,未來財政缺口大概只會愈來愈大。
為什麼人民不生育呢?一是經過30多年的一胎政策後,適齡生產婦女人數大減,潛在母親少了,潛在嬰兒數量也下降。
二是教育普及和社會文化轉變,從前讀大學是少數人的事,社會平均學歷是高中。讀完書一兩年沒有事情做,父母趕緊催結婚。現在讀完大學再工作打拚兩三年,結婚起碼要到25歲之後。當然還有社會文化轉變,人們不以組織家庭、傳宗接代為第一要務,結婚生子年齡自然地推後。
另一個最重要的原因,那便是住房、教育、醫療等成本的急劇上升,抑制了生育行為,因為深怕生得出,養不起。內地房價急漲,房貸與收入比例從2004年的17%升至現時的44%,醫療費用同期亦增加20多倍。高房價會帶來財富效應,但房價過高,卻會讓人不敢消費甚至生兒育女。
還有,從前的萬千寵愛在一身,6個養一個,到小孩長大畢業後,卻變成一個養6個,擔子已不輕,又豈敢再輕易百上加斤?貿易戰其實真的不重要,因為中國有一個龐大的本土市場。他強便由他強,我只一口真氣便已足。可是,如果人口老化並減少,未來還有誰買房子呢?經濟放慢又怎麼辦?未來的6套房子,會不會到手時價錢已跌了不少?內地如何提高出生率,或許是同等緊急的要務。
筆者為證監會9號業務持牌人
hcl.hkej@gmail.com
(編者按:郝承林著作《致富新世代2──科網君臨天下》現已發售)
歡迎訂購:實體書、電子書
PUBLISHED 4 HOURS AGOUPDATED 26 MIN AGO
Lauren Feiner @LAUREN_FEINER KEY POINTS Apple announced new versions of its software for iPhones, iPads and Macs at its annual software developers event Monday. It also announced a new Mac Pro, it’s most powerful computer ever. It costs $6,000. Apple also gave developers a new way to migrate their iPad apps to a Mac, which will give it more opportunities to sell apps through its Mac App Store. WATCH NOW VIDEO02:21 Watch Apple unveil big changes to iOS at WWDC Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference Monday where it unveiled its new software for Mac, iPhone and iPad as well as a new $6,000 Mac Pro.
WWDC is where Apple typically pulls back the curtains on where its software is heading. The company has announced a new version of its iOS at WWDC every year since 2009. It unveiled version 13 at Monday’s event, which comes with a new dark mode and updated apps.
Apple also announced its new macOS that will make iOS apps available to 100 million Mac users. The announcement fits into Apple’s new focus on selling services to existing device users as the smartphone market has slowed down.
Beyond that, Apple TV and the Apple Watch also have new software updates.
All of the software updates announced on Monday will be immediately available for developers. Everyone else will receive them for free in the fall.
Here’s everything Apple announced on Monday:
Mac WATCH NOW VIDEO02:03 Apple announces new Mac Pro and 6K display Apple announced a new Mac Pro at Monday’s event, which it said is its most powerful ever. The new system offers robust features for professionals dealing with large files like videos. Apple built a new card called Afterburner that can process 6 billion pixels per second to achieve more efficient video editing. The Mac Pro has 1.5 terabytes of system memory and a 1.4 kW power supply. The Mac Pro will start at $5,999 and will be available this fall.
Apple also introduced a new 32-inch display called the Pro Display XDR. It has what Apple calls extreme dynamic range, which produces more accurate colors. The Pro Display XDR will start at $4,999 and also be available in the fall. It does not include the stand, which costs another $999.
Apple introduced its new macOS Catalina.
The big news: iTunes is no more. Instead, Apple is splitting iTunes into three separate apps: Apple Music, Apple Podcasts and Apple TV. Users no longer need iTunes to sync their phones to the computer.
WATCH NOW VIDEO02:08 Apple announces end of iTunes after 13 years With a new feature called Sidecar, users can make their iPad into a second display for their Mac. The new Voice Control for both iOS and macOS lets users control their devices with their voices using the latest Siri voice recognition technology. It’s a feature designed for people with disabilities.
Apple is expanding Find My iPhone through an app called Find My that will also be available for the Mac. Even when the Mac is offline or sleeping, it will send off a Bluetooth signal that can be detected, so users can locate their devices. Apple’s new Activation Lock makes it so that a thief would not be able to access a stolen Mac.
Apple is making it easier to create apps that work on macOS and iOS with Project Catalyst, which will be available to developers in the new macOS on Monday. The update means developers can easily bring their iPhone and iPad over to the Mac. It also gives Apple the opportunity to sell even more apps on the 100 million Macs being used today.
Developers had been watching for signs of whether Apple’s iOS will eventually replace its operating system for Mac, or at least become the primary platform. At last year’s event, Apple said that it was not merging iOS with MacOS. But as Apple has shifted its focus into selling services to existing iPhone users as smartphone sales slim down, the mobile operating system has become increasingly more important.
iPad WATCH NOW VIDEO01:14 Apple announces multitasking iPadOS Apple made some of its biggest changes to the iPads software on Monday. It now runs a new operating system called iPad OS, which is based on iOS for iPhones. It features several new features that make the iPad act more like a traditional desktop computer.
iPad OS will make it easier to multitask. Users can switch between apps more smoothly or even view two windows next to each other. That means an iPad user can put two documents or notes side by side.
Typing and scrolling is designed to be easier to use as well. The keyboard can be shrunken down to make it easier to type with one hand on the screen.
The new system will make it easier to share files through new folder sharing through iCloud drive. Users can also plug a thumb drive, SD card reader or digital camera directly into the iPad to upload files, videos or photos.
Safari on iPad will serve viewers the desktop version of apps, rather than the mobile version to make for a smoother browsing experience. The browser will get new keyboard shortcuts and a download manager.
iOS Apple unveiled its latest version of its iPhone operating system, iOS 13. With the new system, unlocking with FaceID will be 30% faster. App launch speed will be up to twice as fast on the new system.
The operating system got a big redesign with the introduction of dark mode, which gives system menus and apps a dark background. The keyboard will allow users to swipe across letters to type, rather than need to tap individual letters.
Apple added new features to some of its popular iOS apps built into the iPhone. Safari will let users more easily change text size, Mail will now support rich fonts and Notes will have a gallery view. The Reminders app got the biggest rewrite, adding options to easily add photos and locations with a quick type bar. If a user tags a person in a reminder, they will get a notification about it next time they enter a message with that person.
Apple has been working to revamp its Maps with more granularity and a street view mode similar to the one in Google Maps. It expects to roll out the new version of the app to the entire U.S. by the end of 2019.
On the privacy front, Apple announced a new “Sign in with Apple” feature that gives users greater control over the data they share with apps. Developers will be able to include the sign-in for their apps as an alternative to a sign in option with Facebook or Google, which Apple criticized on stage for gathering too much personal data about users.
With Sign in with Apple, if an app asks a user to share their email address, the user can choose to share their real address or have Apple share an automatically generated address that forwards to their actual account. Apple also announced HomeKit Secure Video, which will analyze home security footage in the home before encrypting it and sending it to the cloud to provide better privacy.
Siri is getting some new updates as well, including a more natural voice. Siri can announce messages through Apple’s messaging app or a third party messaging app. It will also work with third-party apps like Pandora and Waze on CarPlay.
Apple is making it smoother to transition audio experiences between devices, so that users can transfer music or podcasts playing through their Airpods to their HomePod once they get home. Users can also share audio with friends through their devices.
Watch SS: 2019 Apple WWDC- Apple Watch Apple Watch updates at the 2019 Apple WWDC In San Francisco. Source: Apple Apple is bringing more apps to the watch, including voice memos, audiobooks and the calculator.
The new WatchOS makes the watch more independent from the iPhone. Users will be able to update their watch software on the device directly, rather than through the iPhone. The OS will support independent apps that don’t require a companion app on the iPhone. It will also let users search the full App Store from the watch directly and live stream audio.
Apple is also expanding its health features on the new watch operating system. It will give users more insights into their “activity trends” over longer periods of time. It also adds an app that will alert users when they are being exposed to dangerously loud noise levels.
The company announced a new cycle tracking app for tracking fertility and menstrual cycles. The app will be available both on the watch and to non-watch users on the iPhone through the Health app.
TV SS: 2019 Apple WWDC: tvOS Tim Cook Tim Cook introduces tvOS at the 2019 Apple WWDC in San Francisco. Source: Apple Apple is redesigning its TV homepage and letting different profiles have their own “up next” lists. Apple’s TV operating system will support Xbox and PlayStation controllers to for playing video games.