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The Almighty Buck

New OpenLibra Cryptocurrency: Like Libra, But Not Run By Facebook (mashable.com) 68

"While Facebook's upcoming cryptocurrency Libra struggles to keep partners on board and regulators happy, an alternative called OpenLibra is here to address some of Libra's potential shortcomings," reports Mashable: Announced at Ethereum Foundation's Devcon 5 conference in Osaka, Japan, OpenLibra is described as an "open platform for financial inclusion," with a telling tagline: "Not run by Facebook." OpenLibra aims to be compatible with Libra in a technical sense, meaning someone building an app on the Libra platform should be able to easily deploy it to OpenLibra as well. OpenLibra's token's value will be pegged to the value of the Libra token.

But while Libra will be a permissioned blockchain (meaning, roughly, that only permitted parties will be able to run a Libra node), OpenLibra will be permissionless from the start. There's an important difference in governance, too. Libra will initially be run by a foundation comprised of up to a 100 corporations and non-profits. It's not entirely clear how OpenLibra will be governed, but the 26-strong "core team" of the project includes people related to cryptocurrency projects such as Ethereum and Cosmos.

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New OpenLibra Cryptocurrency: Like Libra, But Not Run By Facebook

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  • I do not understand how the value of one cryptocoin can be pegged to that of another. Surely if there is demand for Libra tokens and no demand for OpenLibra, that peg will fail? Or the other way around, for that matter.

    • It is all bullshit. Every last bit of this whole thing
    • It is pegged as long as someone agrees to trade at that price.
      That is what to watch out for. It can be arranged, and it can also fail.

    • by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      well they peg the price to that when they sell their coins - will they buy them back at that price? quite unlikely, so unlikely that the correct answer to this question is "hahahaha".

      DOA, stupid idea, nobody should touch it with a 40000 feet pole.

    • There are a couple of ways people have gone about this. Without centralization and with a peg to another chain, I believe one strategy would be to tie the creation of OpenLibra to locking an equal amount of Libra. Sort of a fully funded reserve. Then require the destruction of OpenLibra to unlock the corresponding reserves.

      This would let people buy in to Libra and then convert to an OpenLibra alternative or intermediaries could deal with Libra and just sell OpenLibra direct to users.

    • Expecting logic to apply to anything involving cryptocurrency is probably a waste of your time. Come to think of it, pegging to actual currencies often doesn't work all that well in the long run.

      I am a bit curious what the OpenLibra folks are up to. It seems a safe bet that whatever they are doing, it is more likely to benefit them than those who actually use Libra or OpenLibra.

    • The key to that is that Libra and Open Libra aren't mined, they are issued by the central authority. Libra is also supposed to have a stable value. To bring the price down, Facebook will just issue more Libra. To bring the price up, they'd retire tokens that have been exchanged for USD.

      This is similar to how the federal reserve controls inflation. The difference is that it would be Facebook and friends doing it rather than the Fed. The Fed hires some of the best economists in the world and sometimes th

  • by KixWooder ( 5232441 ) on Sunday October 13, 2019 @06:41AM (#59302476)
    The hype train has left the station. No new people are falling for your pyramid schemes.
  • Targeted to those who wouldn't trust Facebook et al. with their money or their privacy, but would trust complete unknown strangers to keep the peg of openlibra (also known as idiots). Because you know the tether story is playing out so nice.
  • cryptocurrency is vaporware, i would rather collect scraps of copper wire & pipe or aluminum if i was living ghetto style, or invest in silver or maybe gold or platinum as a hedge against the crash of the USD if i was a rich man
    • Everything outside Bitcoin are scams. But now Bitcoin is ten years old. We live in a world where the Gold Standard is over. A lot of countries have negative bond yield, as a consequence of malinvestment. An alternative is required, not for next year, but for the future.
      • An alternative that needs a lot of compute farms and electric power is not the future. Cryptocurrency in its current form gets only an E for effort. As part of the current monetary system it might have its uses but it is no better than gold, diamonds or cash in the long run.

        • Modern way of life requires energy, a lot. A washing machine requires more energy than washing by hand. The energy powering Bitcoin today is the cheaper one; Unused capacity, and energy that will be lost otherwise.
      • An alternative is indeed required – but for the economic system, not for the form of money.

        Conventional currency has substance of value originating in the work of the whole currency area's workforce and its value creation, expressed in quantities like the GDP. Cryptocurrencies are created ex nihilo, there is nothing to back them, no substance of value, and it can only have any exchange value greater than zero because there still is a conventional currency with a real substance of value that it can be

        • Conventional money like Gold, was money because Gold has a huge stock-to-flow ratio (~62) .

          Since the end of the Gold Standard 1971. Debt Is Money We Owe To Ourselves. Only the borrowing 'rate' limits the quantity of money.

          Bitcoin is similar to Gold.
        • With a high-to-stock ratio you can't inflate easily the supply (highly inelastic related to the price).
        • by sichbo ( 1188157 )

          Agreed. None of these crypto currencies do anything to address the underlying problem of zero-sum economics, which forces people into a toxic and (in my personal view uncilivised) social contract which obliges everyone to waste a bunch of resources and pollute the planet in the interest of quarterly earnings and doing "something" to merely put food on the table. I submit as a solution to the current social and environmental train wreck we call that we economics, we let go of zero-sum accounting and switch t

          • Ah, there was a movie made on exactly that theory called "In Time" with little watsisname in it before he butched up and grew some facial hair.

            • by sichbo ( 1188157 )

              Looks entertaining, thanks for the tip! Under Civil Money "time robbing" can't play out fortunately :) It wouldn't be a worthwhile endeavour for any miscreant to bother with because a "brand new" account flush with USD$60k of UBI is just as valid as an established one, and also there's no financial reason to decline a person for anything. One of the aims is to gently guide people into communicating with one another again, mending trust and creating real human relationships. At which point your Civil Money b

    • Anything that can just change its value overnight because some cokehead changed his belief in a cokehead fraud venture, is not to be trusted.

      Note how that is true for the Dollar aswell [measuringworth.com].

      What you can trust in, is that if your buddy worked 100 hours to grow and slaughter a cow, and you worked 100 hours to grow potatoes, you can dine on steak and fries tonight.
      What you can trust in, is that your solid brick house will be there for your grandchildren too.

    • If crypto currency is vaporware, then I am very happy with all the times I've bought things with my non-existent money.

  • before
    1) FakeBook sue them for trademark infringement?
    or
    2) FakeBook buy them out and make it worthless?

    Either way, I would not trust even a bent Zimbabwean 1 cent piece with any form of Bitcoin or with FakeBook.

  • Congress gets it this summer - Bitcoin is a money of the free market that went from $0 to $20000.

    Everything else are companies with full authority (Libra, Ethereum...). They can't compete against Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a protocol, the don't trust verify slogan applies.

    Everywhere else, you have to trust a leader or a random third party. This is just marketing hype.
    • Congress gets it this summer - Bitcoin is a money of the free market that went from $0 to $20000.

      It went somewhere else after that. Do you remember where that was...?

    • Says btcwarrior. Yeah you don't have an agenda.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Give it up Mr. Bitcoin Warrior.

      You're running out of people you can snowjob into thinking your magic spreadsheet numbers are worth anything.

      And the "halvening" won't change that.

      Don't say you weren't warned this scheme was going to implode.

      Bitcoin is a money of the free market that went from $0 to $20000.

      By the way, I love how bitcoin enthusiasts measure the value of their "superior alternative monetary system" in traditional fiat.

      Don't even call bitcoin "money." You can't buy a goddam thing with it. Wh

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 13, 2019 @07:33AM (#59302528)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Libra itself is pegged to a basket of stable international currencies. It's value isn't based on the success of the network, but on the currency reserves.

      Your analogy only works if you can exchange the used car for a new one at any time.

      • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

        Libra itself is pegged to a basket of stable international currencies. It's value isn't based on the success of the network, but on the currency reserves.

        Yeah, but the companies that are supposedly going to supply those currency reserves keep backing out. Right now the libra has about as much backing it as the Venezuelan petro.

  • Unless I can physically hold it in my hand, and it has real intrinsic value and always will, it is not real, but a delusion or crime.

    No matter what happens to "the economy", you will *always* be able to barter vegetables, crops, meat, fibers for textiles, medicinal plants & substances, universally used non-abundant metals and rocks, and of course, work.

    What would be an (e.g. economic) "apocalypse" to the world of those Facebook types, would be not even noticed to a farmer.

    And frankly, it can't come earl

    • Gold was money because Gold has a huge stock-to-flow ratio (~62) . But the verification process is not easy. Gold can be replaced by tungsten in bars. The Executive Order 6102 happened - Gold was confiscated,
    • Unless ... it has real intrinsic value and always will, it is not real ...

      Nothing has an intrinsic value, not even regular currency. It's only that people are willing to accept it in exchange for goods and services.

  • likely to be a scam.

    didn't facebook trademark Libra? yeah. you can't just stick open at the front if they don't like it.

  • Start using cryptocurrencies for something other than speculation and money laundering, please.
  • Like Libra, except not at all because it piggybacks on Libra. SMH
  • by humankind ( 704050 ) on Sunday October 13, 2019 @10:12AM (#59302880) Journal

    Also known as, "a database."

  • Technological progress doesn't just make things easier for manking and helps generating profit for enterprises, it makes it harder and harder for populations to earn their money through their own manpower replica louis vuitton wallets [lvbagsbe.com]
  • How many crypto coins are there again? Thousands. It's a joke now.

A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson

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