Quote from: stompix on December 16, 2020, 07:43:00 PM

I don't understand why people think that the launch of Libra will be good for us and for decentralized coins. The whole scenario of people learning about Libra/Diem, exploring it, and then finding out about Bitcoin is a bit childish, everyone has already heard of it and if they haven't tried it it's certain it will take more than Facebook and d'oh, what reputation Facebook has at the moment to convince them.

I slightly dispute this!

Since the 2013 bull run, there were a huge number of people that (only when they felt compelled to) dismissed Bitcoin on the grounds that "only government can issue currencies". Pointing out that national banks are often independent of the government (or at least as told in the popular press), or that independent currencies dominated before those issued by kingdoms (or that a king or queen was often the heir of some issuer of independent currency) never helped against the "Only Governments Issue Money" argument; our promulgator of the deference argument would defer again (successfully?) in replying "only governments issue currencies in today's world"

Until Facebook began to talk about doing it, everyone entirely accepted it, at least implicitly. Attempts have been made to issue private currencies, and governments went quite out of their way to stamp them out every time (with the exception of barter based and older commodity based currencies, which one can argue do not qualify as issued currencies).

It demonstrates either the power or the arrogance of Facebook, really. I might suggest both. Certainly, taking on the banking lobby as a registered US corporation is a hell of a power play, but Facebook can use it's network to fight back: simply starting a flood of newsfeed stories about banking corruption, and simultaneously about alternative money systems (even just cooperative or community banking) could really scare the banking lobby into negociating with Facebook instead of threatening them.

I think Facebook certainly have a big issue though, which you allude to: their credibility is suffering, due to biased policing of the network. Policing always needs a bias, but you sure as hell need to pick your biases carefully if your intention is not to run your media platform into the ground. Facebook in 2020 appear to be absolutely confident that losing between 50-75% of their account holders doesn't alter their power base. That could be either supreme confidence, based on information unavailable to the public, or sheer hubris. I suspect again, slightly both: a master stroke in this situation would be for Facebook-heavy stockholders to sell Facebook shares into a toppy market, then quit as the ship goes down. Selling all the public-trust capital (for short term gains) could quite easily be a part of that play, and Facebook in 2020 sure as hell looks like they are selling every shred of credibility they ever had.

tl;dr there will be no Libra, Facebook knows they're circling the drain, but they have helped to open the floodgates to Bitcoin in a small way