
The Spanish Prisoner: On the Future of Libra and Bitcoin - eastdakota
https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-spanish-prisoner/
======
mdemare
As I'm reading this article, I found myself agreeing, and thinking, so that's
why a certain kind of people likes bitcoin - they're marks - too clever by
half, doing well while doing good. "Especially if there’s also a pot of gold
associated with being on the right side of that Big Idea."

Then comes the kicker: the author is a bitcoin believer who believes it's
_Libra_ that is the con.

Delightfully ironic.

~~~
DanHulton
Yeah, I was _so sure_ he was going to present Bitcoin as the obvious Spanish
Prisoner con it is - but wow, what a turnaround.

Honestly, I wonder what failings I have in a similar vein?

~~~
nostrademons
There are a couple of interesting Ribbonfarm essays on the topic:

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/08/12/the-economics-of-
price...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/08/12/the-economics-of-
pricelessness/)

[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/05/07/weaponized-
sacredness/](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/05/07/weaponized-sacredness/)

Basically, _anything you hold sacred_ is a vulnerability, because they allow
people to appeal to your values to avoid critical evaluation by your
rationality. And conversely, looking at those areas that you couldn't imagine
living life without tells you what areas you're probably being taken advantage
of. Do you value your family and children's future? Any company that promises
to make life easy for them has a direct line to your purse strings. (This,
BTW, is probably why the price of education and single-family housing is
skyrocketing.) Value independence? Companies that give you flexible working
conditions (think Uber) can exploit this to pay you less. Want to do good in
the world? It comes at a price, as any non-profit or social-services employee
can tell you. Can't imagine living without the nation-state? You're being
fucked over by the government.

The only person who is truly immune to cons is a nihilistic sociopath who
doesn't actually believe social reality exists and works solely for personal
benefit. But the flip side of that is that it's debatable whether such a
person is actually _alive_ and _human_ in the way most of us think about it.

(Note that money itself is a long-con designed to convince said nihilistic
sociopaths into working for the general public benefit. As long as you can
convince them that "personal benefit" = "money", you can get them to do things
that have social value to others, because that's how they get money.)

~~~
wolf550e
nihilistic sociopaths have invented financial engineering which generates
money without providing social value to others.

------
DINKDINK
"At the core, we believe that a network that helps move more [private speech]
— where a lot of illicit activities happen — to a digital network that
[requires speech permits] with proper [deanonymizing] practices, combined with
the ability for law enforcement and regulators [to no longer have fourth-
amendment barriers to viewing the panopitcon], will be a big opportunity to
increase the efficacy of [eradicating unapproved speech]."

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/libra-2-weeks-
in...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/david-marcus/libra-2-weeks-
in/10158616513819148/)

~~~
tzs
The actual quote: "At the core, we believe that a network that helps move more
cash transactions — where a lot of illicit activities happen — to a digital
network that features regulated on and off ramps with proper know-your-
customer (KYC) practices, combined with the ability for law enforcement and
regulators to conduct their own analysis of on-chain activity, will be a big
opportunity to increase the efficacy of financial crimes monitoring and
enforcement"

------
Mindwipe
The article is basically unreadable, but the fundamental point is probably
correct in that if you care about the fact that Mastercard can and does impose
pretty horrid censorship requirements on a lot of platforms, and a state that
can see everything you do money wise has some pretty scary implications, then
Bitcoin has offered some hope there. And Libra is intended (probably) to
remove those advantages by co-opting the idea.

Of course, the Libra consortium would also say that it doesn't do those
things, because it seems to have promised a bunch of contradictory things to
different people. Dystopian levels of control to regulators and banks and
Facebook shareholders, but also "people can totally have independent wallets
that will enable bypassing KYC etc! We've just not built it yet!"

You'd have to be very silly to believe the latter plan will not be quietly
dropped in favour of the former (and it's sadly logical to do so as far as FB
are concerned).

~~~
jonahss
I agree, the article gradually became more incomprehensible but the core point
seems to be that the author has realized that mainstream currency will become
crypto with government/corporate backing and lose the anonymity.

which is true. It couldn’t have gone any other way, realistically.

I’ve made my peace with it, at least the we keep making tiny steps forward. It
sure beats the credit card networks and paypal.

~~~
patrickaljord
> It sure beats the credit card networks and paypal.

The credit card networks and paypal are part of the Libra alliance. My guess
is, Libra will have the same problems as the current solutions but it will
make onboarding easier for unbanked people in other countries who just need a
whatsapp account to start using Libra. But for countries where most people
already have a Visa/Mastercard, it's kind of redundant. Kind of like bitcoin
in fact without the censorship but with price stability.

~~~
TACIXAT
I think (hope) the fees will be significantly lower for Libra than the credit
and debit card networks. That is the biggest selling point for me.

~~~
ficklepickle
So MasterCard joined a consortium with the goal of destroying their existing
lucrative business? I find that unlikely.

------
leshow
The way this article is written I feel like I'm being conned while reading it.
It's basically repeating the same thing for 90% of the article; talking about
the spanish prisoner movie. Nothing about why zuckerberg is 'running a con' or
what the con even is.

Then at the end of it, I'm supposed to believe that the con is the fact that
libra, while potentially facilitating ecommerce and being generally a good
thing, is going to kill bitcoin. Why is that a bad thing? If it's better at
ecommerce than bitcoin is, then bitcoin deserves to die. It's not insidious to
win at something if it's better.

I don't even know if I agree that Libra is a good thing, but the conclusions
drawn here don't make any sense.

------
igrobforfun
>I will TAKE the protocols and the KYC procedures and everything else Libra
offers, and I will USE all of that to further the social justice goals that I
maintain.

No, you won't. If your goals really are opposed to the current crop of
political elites, then they won't let you use Libra to replace them.

When your opponents make up unfair rules to stop you, dont play by their
rules.

------
fc_barnes
The author is painfully edgy and seems to be oblivious to the fact that the
main use-case for Bitcoin, aside from transferring wealth from marks to
whales, is the purchase of contraband, which Libra presumably won't allow. The
article is a reasonably fun read, despite this.

------
strikelaserclaw
Most people couldn't give two shi*ts about the government monitoring their
financial activity, in fact they would like their money to have some sort of
regulation from the government. As far as bitcoin goes, it is completely
controlled by very few entities, it in no way benefits the common man (just
benefits a different oligarchy, one that is shadier).

------
markemer
This guy is right about one thing. The Spanish Prisoner is a great film. The
rest is gibberish.

