Bitcoin Forum

Decentralization is a cause, not a buzzword.

You may have heard of Bitcoin – you may even have considered using it as a means of payment, or investing some money in it with the hope that it might rise in value, like a stock. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency – a digital asset that exists on an immutable ledger, open to all and completely transparent.

And perhaps you decided to pass on Bitcoin for now, until the technology was more mature, or easier to access, or for a dozen other valid reasons.

You may also have witnessed a barrage of attacks on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, particularly after a bubble formed in 2017 that created artificial and unsustainable value for a few (many in the media are currently describing Beyond Meat’s stock in similar ways).

For example, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon described Bitcoin as a ‘fraud’ and Facebook banned cryptocurrency advertising. Now both companies are creating their own cryptocurrencies.

Anything But Libra
In this letter we will focus on Facebook’s new project, something they have been working on in secret for over a year.

They are calling it Libra.

Ironically the Latin stub for the word ‘Libra’ means ‘freedom, or liberty’ while the zodiac sign – a pair of scales – suggests justice.
Facebook’s version of Libra represents neither of these concepts. But it’s clever marketing.

We’re writing to urge you to resist the ‘convenience’ Facebook will likely offer you in using their Libra cryptocurrency, and to consider the benefits of decentralization.

Payment Processors Join Forces With Facebook To Control, Tax, And Monitor Your Spending
MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal have joined forces with Facebook, and are said to be backing the new Libra cryptocurrency to the tune of $10 million each.

You know those companies well: they have been taxing the global economy, and a large proportion of consumer spending, to the tune of about three percent for the past 30-odd years.

Visa and MasterCard process the bulk of credit card transactions worldwide. In 2018, for instance, there were 2.4 billion MasterCard-branded debit and credit cards in existence generating revenue of $14.95 billion.

As recently as January this year, plans were uncovered by the Wall Street Journal that the behemoths in this industry were considering raising transaction fees. Meanwhile PayPal whacks the average merchant with a 2.9 percent fee plus thirty cents per transaction.

In other words, virtually everything you buy has a pricing premium in-built: a tax of three percent or so, that goes to sustaining these businesses. If your government was to raise your tax rate by three percent, you’d protest with your vote.

In this case, you finally HAVE a vote, and we urge you to use it.

Facebook Sells, Leaks, And Controls Your Data
Forget what Mark Zuckerberg says. From the Cambridge Analytica scandal to the data breach of 50 million users late last year, Facebook’s interest in you is not personal, and he is not sorry. His business is your data, which his company abuses and misuses repeatedly.

Your data, your life, your photos, your friends, your face, your family, your dog, your location, your sexuality, your ethnicity, your ‘secret crush’ – Facebook knows it all, and sells it to the highest bidder.

At the risk of echoing a dystopian undercurrent of fear that pervades our surveillance society, we encourage you to consider whether this is healthy – and whether adding your purchase information into that equation provides more, or less, safety for you and for our society.

Because the way you spend, when aggregated with the rest of the data that Big Tech companies already own, provides an even fuller picture of who you are, what you do, where you go, and what you might do next. Remember – Facebook literally, quite literally, already knows you better than you know yourself. It has been used to predict a depression diagnosis with 70% accuracy – before any visit to a doctor.

Facebook is not necessarily evil: but nor does it exhibit the presence of a moral compass. Its platform has been used to propagate information, much of it false, that has led to ethnic cleansing, murder, suicide, cyber-bullying, interference in national elections. Facebook’s responses to these events has been to prevaricate, to excuse itself, to refuse to acknowledge its responsibility for their existence – and when overwhelmed with evidence, to issue meek apologies.

Facebook is a private company. You agree to its terms of service when you use its platform, and you have very few rights to privacy in exchange for the ‘convenience’ it provides. Your right to free speech, if you are in the USA, is a constitutional right – it does not extend to private companies, and they are under no obligation to grant it, nor to curtail it.

The likelihood of Facebook changing its business model as it adopts a cryptocurrency seems low. Trust is earned, and Facebook is in debt.

Decentralization Is Your Friend
At the heart of cryptocurrencies and much of the blockchain technology behind them is the concept of ‘decentralization’.

Decentralization is a movement: it is a conscious effort by some people across the globe to reduce the control that certain organizations, such as banks and technology companies, exert over our lives. (We’re discussing private businesses, although governments are also often criticized too – but that’s a different argument.)

In truth, decentralization is a dream, an ideal. It is neither practical, likely, nor even desirable that we will realize a fully-decentralized existence. But a degree of control over our own data, our own identities, and who has access to our experiences is – many of us believe – a fundamental human right.

Truly decentralized blockchains, like Bitcoin’s, are controlled by no single person or entity.

Users are in control of what they spend, with whom, and on what. The miners that work to keep the network running smoothly do receive a transaction fee for doing so.

It is minuscule in comparison to that imposed by Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal.

Legacy payment processors have joined forces with Facebook to co-opt the cryptocurrency movement and keep control in the hands of the global conglomerates that have been selling your data and taking your money for years.

Libra will be a centralized cryptocurrency, despite efforts to involve stakeholders such as other payment companies – which is likely a ploy to avoid the regulatory issues that have plagued the cryptocurrency industry to date.

Facebook will be in control of your money, and it will use and share your data according to its own agenda.

In many ways, Libra is a declaration of war on decentralization. We have a clear choice: resist centrally controlled cryptocurrencies, or roll over and accept our fate as pawns in the great game of jurisdiction over our data. And our money.

The only true ally you have in the future is your freedom.

And decentralization equals freedom

Thank you

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/reject-facebook-libra-crypto/

Even if we don't hate libra and US already hated it lol. Libra is not only become the complete opposite of the crypto but it has become a threat to the financial sector too. Government even fees worry about that dude.

Attention to what? Stablecoins or centralization? Libra is not a cryptocurrency but a centralized stable token. They are using their own brand to create a brand in a new sector. It's a company branching out but not in a good way.

They are putting their fingers where they don't belong and they don't care because money buys everything and a bunch of brainwashed facebook addicts will buy everything with their logo on just like those apple morons that stand in lines all night to get the most overpriced phone in the world.

Although I support that people will now notice Cryptocurrency because Facebook has created their own Crypto but only a centralized version, I do not support buying it, I'm not using any of their platform, not even their partner's platform and since it's created to be a Stable coin like Tether, I don't think it will be included in my portfolio, decentralization is still high in my agenda.

I guess you mean united State citizens but not the government, because everything that Libra stands for is exactly what the United State government wants, Libra coin is not a decentralized coin, and our information will still be leaked to the government through the partnership they are having with various financial institutions.

I know that the government of US has been having issue with the Facebook CEO has regards data privacy, which I am suspecting that Facebook is just trying to create this system to appeal them after seeing the challenge they are having with decentralized nature of bitcoin, which is the more reason why there is need to reject it because Facebook cannot be playing us like we are games and toying with our emotions.

it is not a "token" either. it is not even a coin. it might as well not even have a blockchain because simply Libra is PayPal. so if you can call those numbers in  your PayPal account as "coins" or "tokens" so could you do that for Libra.
all they are doing is that they saw the hype that cryptocurrencies had and wanted a share of the market to make billions out of it.

I read somewhere that not even officials of Facebook invested on their own coin yet. So why we need to invest on that shit car in because it is just say much the digital form of USD are any other Fiat money and it is not going to bring any changes in our life if people are ready to live with the current structure then they should go for centralised call investment but decentralised money is something revolutionary and will change our life.

I think this might be a bit premature, because I don't think the features of the Facebook coin has been released yet and we are not certain if it would be centralised or decentralised, let us wait for it to pass regulations and fully launch before we start throwing speculations before we have even tested it for ourselves.

If Facebook's proposed cryptocurrency comes with total regulations and control, there's no point of using it. Advertisers may use it advertise on the platform but there no point in using it as a way to transfer money among your contacts. We have better ways.
Facebook itself doesn't have a good history about safeguarding user privacy and as our private infos were not enough, we'd also be providing it with our financial information. This would become a priority target for hackers as every info would be centralized.

It could be a big threat, just look at Ripple, they are centralized, but they have a good success getting adopted and still a big threat to centralized coins in the market, and remember there was a time that they dislodge Ethereum to the second place, Libra coin has all the resources in their disposal, we are talking a mammoth in our midst.

Facebook is EVIL.Those who use facebook and collaborate in its expansion are no less EVIL.The majority of humankind is EVIL ;D

You see, people are not fools, most people here know exactly what they want and I think no one need to tell them what to choose. The ripple you talked about, I dint really see anything successful about them, the fact that they occupied the 3rd seat does not mean they have success, they could have just manipulated their way into that position by buying it, if they really had success, their value would probably have been more than that, but look at their value, there is still nothing to write home about it.

People see them as threat and which is why they don’t want to fully accept it too and this is same way many people would not accept Facebook Libra coin if they see it as threat to any of their operation in the market. Do not forget that the most interest of people is the decentralization which they do not stand for.