Issue 42
Everyone hates Libra
After two days of Congressional hearings last week it is clear that, Libra - Facebook's forthcoming cryptocurrency - is intensely disliked by the establishment. Take the following headlines:
- Fear of Facebook's Libra unites finance chiefs at fractious G-7.
- Facebook’s Crypto Woes Deepen as Mnuchin Joins Parade of Critics.
- Facebook’s Crypto Annoys Everyone.
- Facebook’s Libra could be more dangerous than 9/11, congressman says.
As a result, Facebook is "backpedaling from its ambitious vision for Libra", moving away from the lofty goals set out in its white paper towards something more closely resembling a conventional financial network. It certainly didn't help that Facebook failed to do even a modicum of homework such as, oh I don't know, actually getting in touch with the Swiss agency that will supposedly be governing the crypto.
It's a shame, really, because most of the claims used to attack Libra are completely unfounded yet Facebook is folding like a cheap suit. In a three-part series on Libra, Diego Zuluaga of the Alt-M blog delves into how the critics' line of thinking is fundamentally flawed (do read the whole series). Some excerpts:
On systemic risk
"...a massive redemption caused by factors unique to Libra would not seem enough to cause a wider systemic crisis. Things might turn out differently if the Libra Association went back on its commitment to purchase stable assets on a one-for-one basis for every unit of Libra it issued. However, the prospect of a rapid loss of confidence in Libra as a result of such a turnabout, and the potential for customer lawsuits, provide strong disincentives against the Libra Association’s reneging on its promise of full backing. Still, given the commitments that the Libra Association has made so far, the grounds for expecting Libra to present a new systemic risk are lacking."
On monopolisation
"Networks are fragile things. A miscalculated governance change, such as a fee increase or a decrease in processing speed, can rapidly cause users to leave the network in favor of alternatives. This potential for rapid unraveling acts as a spur for networks to remain competitive and refrain from abusing customers. In Libra’s case, many potential rivals are members of the network and would see business flow to them directly if Libra reneged on its promise of cheap payments and transparency. Some of these latent competitors are billion-dollar businesses processing trillions of dollars’ worth of transactions every year, so one should not dismiss out of hand their ability to compete with Libra.
Even if Facebook did manage to gain control over the governance of Libra, Mastercard, Paypal, and Visa will still run their own payments applications. Furthermore, Libra will face different competitors in different markets. For domestic payments, the card networks, Venmo, Paypal, and Zelle (the banks’ Venmo) come to mind. In international payments, Transferwise has quickly become a successful cost-cutter by matching foreign-exchange transactions, whereas Ripple promises to use cryptocurrency technology to cut the cost of cross-border money transfers. To these one must add the incumbent remittance providers, such as Western Union and Ria."
On facilitating crime
"...the anecdotal evidence overstates the degree to which cryptocurrencies facilitate crime. While the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency transactions disguises the identity of the people involved, most cryptocurrencies are a poor instrument for nefarious activities. This is because the transaction ledger, the blockchain, is publicly accessible and includes information about the origin and destination of cryptocurrency payments. Firms like Chainalysis (whose co-founder the Times article cited) and Elliptic have in fact made it their business to pore through blockchains on behalf of clients, including the U.S. government, to combat fraud and aid the pursuit of crime.
Both resellers and validators will act as intermediaries and be subject to prudential and consumer protection rules. Furthermore, digital wallet providers – who will support the applications people use to make and receive Libra payments – will collect personal information from Libra users to comply with regulations against money-laundering and financial crime in the jurisdictions where the user lives. For example, Calibra, Facebook’s own digital wallet subsidiary, has registered as a money services business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) at the U.S. Treasury. Calibra also holds eight state money transmitter licenses as of July 16. From Marcus’ testimony, it seems Calibra would like to have licenses in all U.S. jurisdictions – states and territories – before Libra launches in 2020. Marcus also stated the Libra Association will register with FinCEN, despite being a Swiss-based foundation."
I wanted Libra to succeed but Facebook is doing its darnedest to mess the whole thing up. The accusations being thrown at the yet-to-be-released stablecoin have very little weight to them, yet Facebook is ceding valuable ground to every single one. Perhaps that 5-billion dollar fine really did shake things up and Facebook has lost what disruptive touch it once had, with Libra all but destined for the cryptocurrency scrapheap.
Enjoy the rest of this week's issue. Cheers,
— Justin
The bits
Slacking off on security
The biggest waste of time that for some reason - unbeknownst to me - people still use, does not have the best security track record. When the CEO of Keybase had his account compromised and contacted support, Slack "did not inform me of the directly related 2015 Security Incident but instead implied that I was messy with my security practices and was to blame".
Learn more:
- Slack resets passwords for 1% of its users because of 2015 hack »
- Slack Security Incident for Keybase CEO »
Please, read the terms and conditions
Did you install FaceApp to age yourself or your friends? Well, in this case if you're not paying for the product... your face is. There's a good chance all of your photos (yep, everything on your phone) will be used to train some Russian facial recognition algorithm.
But I'm sure it'll be fine; when have the Russians ever violated anyone's privacy/liberties?
Learn more:
- Viral App FaceApp Now Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People's Faces And Names »
- FaceApp is back and so are privacy concerns »
- FaceApp responds to privacy concerns »
The Huawei fallout continues
At least the trade war is bringing in lots of tariff revenue, right? 🤔
Learn more:
- Huawei Plans Extensive Layoffs in the U.S. »
- Foreign purchases of American homes plunge 36% as Chinese buyers flee the market »
- Google's Project Dragonfly 'terminated' in China »
- Why the wheels fell off China’s tech boom »
Other bits of interest
- Europe Billed Its Answer to GPS as More Robust. It’s Been Mostly Down for Days »
- Elon Musk’s Neuralink Wants ‘Sewing Machine-Like’ Robots to Wire Brains to the Internet »
- This Clever New Service Auto-Cancels Your Free Trials »
- How WeChat censors private conversations, automatically in real time »
- Apple preaches privacy. Lawmakers want the talk to turn to action »
- Jony Ive’s Mistakes: When Beautiful Design Is Bad Design »
Image of the week
A high house price-to-rent or price-to-income ratio doesn't necessarily mean a country is due for a housing crash (e.g. zoning laws might be restricting supply). But it's certainly worth watching.
According to these data, New Zealand has the highest house price-to-rent ratio of the 22 countries analysed, closely followed by Canada. New Zealand is also #1 on the price-to-income scale (not shown here), although both are pipped by Portugal to the top spot in terms of real house prices.
The view source link will take you to the creators of this graphic, but you'll have to visit Bloomberg for the original data table.
This week's data breaches
A lot of poor security practices exposed this week, and the most important lesson for the average user is to be careful about which browser extensions you install (and don't use any Microsoft browser).
The breaches:
- In systemic breach, hackers steal millions of Bulgarians' financial data »
- Sprint says hackers breached customer accounts via Samsung website »
- Loan apps exposed real-time location data on millions in China »
- Florida DMV sells your personal information to private companies, marketing firms »
- I found your data. It’s for sale »
- My browser, the spy: How extensions slurped up browsing histories from 4M users »
- Edge sends the full URL of pages you visit to Microsoft »
That's all for now. If you enjoyed this issue, feel free to share it via email →
Issue 42: Everyone hates Libra was compiled by Justin Pyvis and delivered on 23 July 2019. Join the conversation on the fediverse at Detrended.net.