
U.S. Congress drafts bill to stop Zuckerberg's Libra - omarchowdhury
https://www.scribd.com/document/417056845/Keep-Big-Tech-out-of-Finance-Act-Discussion-Draft
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Animats
This isn't an "action by Congress". It's somebody's document made up to look
like a draft bill. There's no such bill on congress.gov.

Who's "Ryan Todd", anyway?

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omarchowdhury
"A source familiar with the matter told The Block that the discussion draft is
being floated by the House Financial Services Committee staff. However, it
doesn't have an official lead yet."

[https://www.theblockcrypto.com/tiny/congressional-leaders-
ha...](https://www.theblockcrypto.com/tiny/congressional-leaders-have-drafted-
a-bill-that-would-ban-big-tech-from-launching-a-digital-asset/)

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asperous
I'm not big into politics but my understanding is these click bait bills are
drafted and thrown out on a weekly basis. The purpose of these bills that will
never pass is so when people try to get re-elected they can say things like "I
tried to stop Facebook from interfering with our financial system" or
something along those lines that appeals to their base.

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Nightshaxx
Yea I agree. Anyone can say they want to stop something, but untill actual
debate starts happening over the bill nothing is even close to being passed.

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ngngngng
I lose faith in representative democracy by the day. I certainly don't feel
like my opinions are being represented 99% of the time. But the vast majority
of Americans are completely unaware of what's happening in Congress at any
given time.

I've thought of building an app where voters could enter their opinions and be
notified whenever their representatives vote for or against their views, but I
can't figure out monetization.

~~~
Vervious
What does this have to do with Libra? I bet most Americans are in favor of
stopping Libra; aka Facebook's private currency.

Central banking is a huge part of international economic policy and stability.
There's a reason private money was outlawed in the 1900s.

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caruana
> There's a reason private money was outlawed in the 1900s.

And the reason is probably a bit more nuanced than this sentence projects.
Furthermore, reasoning in the 1900s should not be used to justify government
monopoly on money in 2019.

~~~
Vervious
Fair. I guess the 2008 financial crisis is an elephant in the room, for
instance, revealing flaws in our current economic approach. But that is a very
different conversation, I think, for a very different audience.

Sometimes, being in the cryptocurrency industry, it feels like a shouting
match between people who have never studied economics or distributed systems
or cryptography.

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Vervious
Disclaimer: I work on a decentralized cryptocurrency

For the HN'ers who want to jump in and evangelize cryptocurrencies:

Libra is not a cryptocurrency. It is a Facebook-controlled private currency
intended to circumvent the international banking system. Facebook, here, is in
every way a financial institution.

Please don't let them fool you. The "decentralized" "byzantine-fault tolerant"
"cryptocurrency" aspect is just tacked on as a marketing ploy.

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eloff
Cryptocurrencies are tulips, that is investment vehicles of the greater fool
style. They only have value if you can find a greater fool to sell it to. By
and large they're not useful as a currency.

Libra could be. It's also managed at somewhat arms length from Facebook in
that it's run by the Libra foundation. I say somewhat because Facebook intends
to integrate it into WhatsApp and Messenger.

I don't see a technical or organizational reason Libra can't be a
crytocurrency - and the very first successful one.

~~~
Vervious
I agree that fiat only has value if a government, or some other group with
capital backs it.

Cryptocurrency is distinct from "digital currency" in that it's decentralized,
and not managed by a large actor. Sure, they may be doomed to fail.

Libra is NOT a decentralized currency, and thus does not deserve any support
from Bitcoin/cryptocurrency people.

I 100% agree with you, just want to make the distinction between
"cryptocurrency" and "digital money". Libra is Snapchat Cash + Facebook's own
currency and we shouldn't try to defend it, when it is obviously trying to
circumvent government regulation.

Now, it sounds like you don't think digital, private currencies/securities
should be regulated. That's a more interesting conversation. Recall how the
1907 financial panics (and the Great Gatsby era) led the U.S. to government-
regulated central banking in the first place.

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eloff
I didn't say anything about fiat currencies.

I think we should also make a distinction between crytocurrency and digital
money, since the latter has utility.

Bitcoin is not decentralized either. It is in theory, but it requires mining
which centralized naturally due to efficiencies of scale. It also requires
exchanges to convert to and from fiat, and those are completely centralized
private companies. Libra in practice seems to be less centralized than bitcoin
in practice.

People make arguments from theory, but those are not relevant to the systems
in practice in the real world.

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cribbles
A cursory reading of this bill suggests that it blocks “large utility
platforms” from creating “digital assets” used as a “medium of exchange or use
of value”.

1) Does this language even cover Facebook’s Libra? They’ve been careful to
legally insulate themselves somewhat from Calibra / constrain their governance
over Libra for this very reason.

2) Wouldn’t this bill simply open a space for independent projects like Theil
and Altman’s Reserve currency to do the same thing (establish a self-
stabilizing cryptocurrency in developing national markets) with complete
impunity? In what sense does this bill meaningfully restrict “big tech” if
Facebook stakeholder Theil wins big either way?

3) Assuming 1 and 2 are real problems, what would an appropriate response to
projects like Libra be? Short of banning domestic cryptocurrency trade more
broadly, I’m not sure what a sufficiently restrictive law would look like.

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Vervious
If you agree that:

1) U.S. economic policy should be set by democratically elected people, and
that

2) Facebook (or the Libra consortium) is not democratically elected, and that

3) Government monetary policy (aka the USD) stabilizes the economy,

Then, consider supporting bills like this. (I'm sure it has problems and will
be rewritten many times)

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rc_mob
There is no way this would be constitutional.

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CydeWeys
You're _already_ not allowed to make a currency that competes with the USD.
This seems to just be a clarification on top of that.

Why would this be unconstitutional?? There's no constitution-granted right to
create your own financial system.

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pjkundert
The free peoples of the world need tools to prevent these relentless assaults
on our liberties.

Unfortunately, we’ve been sociologically engineered to desire a false sense of
safety delivered by “benevolent” overlords, instead of actual community
interdependence.

Removal of any sense or ability for individual volition in matters of personal
commerce is one of the final steps toward complete servitude.

Fortunately, help is at hand. A new generation of decentralized algorithms
supporting cryptocurrency commerce resistant to (state-initiated) Network
Partitions will support unstoppable commerce between independent agents, and
will work at small (local network) scale, as securely and easily as at global
scale (> millions of aggregate transact per second).

And not a moment too soon.

~~~
Vervious
Disclaimer: I work on decentralized cryptocurrencies.

I think your claims are flawed.

You missed the whole "Big Tech" part of this bill. In fact, I'd argue Facebook
has probably encroached more on our liberties than any other American
institution.

If you read the bill, it's about preventing Facebook from becoming a finance
company, to prevent it from circumventing finance regulations.

The international monetary system is built on government-managed central
banking. This is why modern economics are so stable (and a huge player in
post-WW2 growth). Governments did away with private currencies a long time
ago, and for better or for worse it is a pillar of 21st century economics.

~~~
pjkundert
Libra is a Fiat currency proxy; all on/off-ramps will be KYC and AML
protected, no significant money creation action will be allowed by Facebook.
It’s basically an SDR for the great unwashed.

So, it basically reduces USD to a weighted component of a currency basket.
That’s the only thing this bill is trying to prevent - reducing the supremacy
of the USD. Look past the propaganda. Facebook won’t be allowed to bypass
existing regulations. They’re... regulations, after all.

Modern economics is only “so stable” for big players; small businesses and
flyover country slobs like me and you are sheep to the slaughter.

And, no, Libra isn’t going to do a thing for us, other than insulate is from a
bit of currency instability and lubricate retail transactions and perhaps
remissions back home. It’s a proof-of-oligarchy permissioned global-consensus
blockchain; nothing interesting. No improvement to the risky one-mistake-and-
you’re-dead PKI security model, so most normals will eventually lose their
money, to either incompetency or theft.

If you work on what you believe are decentralized crypto currencies, please
describe, precisely, what occurs when your global system experiences a total
N-segment Network Partition — as will occur in the first 15 minutes of the
next hot war; specific focus on A) system livenness, and B) account “values”
after 1+ week of total partition, followed by global network restoration...

