Bitcoin Forum

Recently, the House of Representatives of United States of America-Committee on Financial Services sent a letter to Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg with regard to the proposed cryptocurrency namely as Libra and its proposed wallet, Calibra.

What do you think guys? Does Facebook proposed cryptocurrency really threatens the Government's monopoly on the money supply?

"Because Facebook is already in the hands of over a quarter of the world's population, it is imperative that Facebook and its partners immediately cease implementation plans until regulators and Congress have an opportunity to examine these issues and take action. During this moratorium, we intend to hold public hearings on the risks and benefits of cryptocurrency-based activities and explore legislative solutions. Failure to cease implementation before we can do so, risks a new Swiss-based financial system that is too big to fail."

https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/07.02.2019_-_fb_ltr.pdf

Yes, exactly, they are afraid that Facebook Libra will become something more than just a cryptocurrency. This is their greatest fear.

I think Washington's handling of the Iran situation is more important. The oil supply agreements with Iran and Saudi Arabia led to the US dollar taking over from Sterling after the Second World War. Russia seems to have taken over OPEC, and Venezuela and Iran are likely to side with China to allow the Renminbi to replace the Dollar. A government backed "crypto" is likely to be more popular than FaceBux, especially as Facebook seems to be on the skids at the moment, as a result of their censorship.

This is my opinion, and don't forget that I believe that Satoshi is/was a department in a central bank.

governments fear everything they cannot manipulate or control. even the banks fear Libra and cryptocurrencies. the banks have probably pressured governments to intervene. let us remember, however, that Libra is not truly decentralized.

If something really bothers Governments, you know for sure they will found a way to stop

Sometimes you guys are so naive to think a coin created by Facebook can threatens a economy

BTC and the ideas can do some to economy, but if a government create a law to arrest anyone who uses BTC, will you continue to use and face the risks?

Now this is a weird statement. ;D
Libra won't be a threat to the US dollar because the libra price will be tied to the US dollar price(if the rumors are right about that).However,it's always good to have a constructive discussion about that topic.Zuckerberg will be obligated to reveal his true intentions about this new facebook currency.

This has been published weeks ago and I think this is another government way of harassing cryptocurrency,imagine the popularity of Facebook is now their target tout down the libra coin release next year.wondering what’s their true motive ,specially these lawmakers that preventing the launching of this much awaited coin

This means that encryption has begun to erupt media warfare between global systems, I believe this step is important in the future of the digital currency will have a political, economic and social impact, Certainly, the more controversial the issue of encryption, the more positive the result.

The US government had the right to question facebook libra before is being rolled out on its consequences on their economy and how its going to affect government policies in a longer term perspectives as digital currency, we are all aware of bitcoin decentralized features which the banks sees as a major threat to their existence the coming of Libra might also posses another threat which prompted congressmen to take a critical assessment of the cryptocurrency so as to take a drastic action.

Facebook Libra will have to obey the law and any judicial decision. As it is a company, it must obey or it will be just shut down.

Facebook indeed has a lot of resources, but in the end they must obey regulations. Maybe Libra project gets postponed

Governments when discussing the risks associated with cryptocurrency consisteo highlights external agencies like exchanges. That publicity could be used to warn people to avoid storing their assets in an exchange and effective use of wallets and private keys.
Similar to cryptocurrency, if one unknowingly divulges credit card information to a third party, while for example; shopping online. Their funds would likely be lost and banking agencies would be of little help.

On the issue of Facebook coin, I would rather not give them control or access to my financial details.

Money is power and facebook already has a big piece of the cake, the problem is if libra gives more money to facebook than any amount we can think about, then it will become a threat for us gov, and banks, even it is a threat for bitcoin. We don't know how popular it will become, but for sure it will be a big deal, if facebook let us pay their services with libra, tons of users will accept it.

The americans will do everything in their power to maintain their fiat ponzi scheme alive...What a surprise.

But i'm gonna be honest, on one hand, I'd like to see how the governments around the world will fight against a new global "cryptocurrency" that threatens the fiat system. But on the other hand, I want Libra to fail, this centralized shitcoin with [very likely] built-in surveillance features will only help big corporations have a bigger and better database of their customers (after buying it from FB, of course) which god knows what they'll do with it other than spam the users with annoying ads.

Probably what the government will want to know is: If facebook is going to give you all of your activity reports constantly, this will be another chance for governments to have access to everything people do. that is what is at stake. this argument that will create financial collapse or will be a danger to banks, it's a fairy tale. what is at stake is control over people

I'm not sure where the fighters between facebook and usa government. Here in my country Facebook new coin is not legally  accepted one. Hubli e e we will find more critics against Libra coin soon.
Aisa group to user I will never encourage the the centralised cryptocurrency market.

Yes, that is the whole point of crypto. But it won't be Libra, it is too weak and badly designed and will be defeated. Bitcoin, truly decentralized, immutable, community maintained, came to this world to put an end to governments and financial institutions from manipulating people's money, or as Antopoulos said: separate Currency from State, the same way Religion and State are now separate in modern countries.

Zuckerberg came too late to the game and in his ignorance removed all the advantages of crypto to restore several disadvantages from fiat. For this reason its going to fail, hard. And having FB, IG and TW behind it won't save it either, but will be fun to start the cryptocoin discussions and people will inevitable find their way here, where it all started... Yes, I expect ignorant Zuckerberg to read this forum to find out why he is failing, he should have adopted Bitcoin instead of attacking it. OR if making (yet another) altcoin, make it as close to Bitcoin as possible, not go the other direction which ensures his failure.

But some people just need to lose half or more of their fortune to get it, just ask those other millionaires who tried to fork bitcoin on their
brilliant ideas alone...

According to some US law you can't make your own money, and that is that. He should have seen it coming from miles away...

Andreas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S6506vkth4) had a good speech about the facebook crypto project. give it a watch.
A corporate central bank as facebook and friends could become a threat for the central banks.

The problem is, it is not tied to USD alone, but rather to different currency, depending on which is more stable.  In short, the Libra value conversion will keep using different currency on which it chooses the most resistant to fluctuation.

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I believe that the US government are fearing of Libra choosing other currency as it will weaken the purchasing power of dollar.  Remember how one US representative wanted to ban cryptocurrency because it weakens the USD influence?  I believe same theme is happening why US government is acting like this.

I don't think so and did you watch how the majority of US lawmakers didn't even like with born of the first real major company to create crypto? What makes you think if US will turn its face to libra when US still has a system that gives a lot of advantages for the country?

It was obvious that not every government will accept Libra coin, but I had hoped that at least USA is going to do so. But they realise that Libra coin would have a massive effect on the current economy, so lets see what happens next.

Things seem to be heating up between US government and the facebook libra project lets see where it will all end but i think eventually facebook will have to bow down and we may see a very tightly regulated libra coin otherwise fb may have to stop the project if they try to avoid govt there.

Yes, it is going to threat the power of the government money supply and the concept of trust over the government as a stake holder of the currency they print. But this is happening and I think the government would be able to implement regulations that is they would be in a position to influence Libra. However, since Libra is going to bank the unbanked, there is a huge sum of profit expected from the operations of the coin.

The government of US sees the crypto as a threat to the dominance of united states Dollar. The Libra coin is waxing stronger and the government are on the alert of the monopoly that may come with the roll out of Libra cryptocurrency. Libra has set to take off and I don't see anything stopping it.

well , did that really came from them ?
i mean , how they can say like that.

for me, what will happen from libra coin will bring new era on money system.
but,the fact, it's still centralized,right ?

Of course it does ;D. Hillariously, Trump in his tweet is trying to attack crypto while all characteristics he has given to them can be applied to fiat currencies. At this point, I am not sure whether it´s funny or not... I consider Libra as an experimental attempt to oppose government-backed money (while privacy and usability is... meh). You can see how many negative reactions it gains. It only proves that what everyone is doing on this sector is right: as everyone would LOVE to control others, and crypto can prevent it to some point. It will be an interesting "reality show" to watch, I guess  ;D.

This entire situation is going to be interesting to follow. Although there seems to be a large void of intelligence and understanding of technology in our current president's administration which will create issues in bringing about a greater understanding to the elected government officials.

When it comes to LIBRA, it is not the decentralisation that the governments are afraid of. They are afraid that the centralisation of money is moving out of their control.

I predict that LIBRA will take over monetary supply in the whole world within 50 years.

If you think about it, it is both good and bad in many ways.

A lot of noise around the Libra coin.I think even if it starts to exist it will not be in too great demand.In my country, almost no one uses Facebook.In this situation, I'm just wondering how things will develop further.If Facebook succeeds then undoubtedly all platforms and all sorts of businesses will massively create their own coins.

Trump tweeted that he is not supporting any cryptocurrency and also he is not confident with Libra. We will see if Libra sometimes succeeds.

Facebook Libra may likely not see the end of the day, it will take an ample lot of convincing and tweaking for it to be granted the permission to launch.

As Facebook is already questioned by the US Government regarding data privacy issue so i think this was in some point related to this issue. Facebook libra will abide the regulation policy thru KYC once launch so i think the US government is just vigilant to ensure that the data privacy will be protected.

Firstly, US government is giving the impression that it's trying to protect its citizens from the bad sides of crypto according to the authorities, but in the real sense, they are scared of what will happen if the world starts using LIBRA.  Maybe it might have a negative impact on US dollar and also people won't be paying taxes as they ought to.

Adding more concerned that took the government in US and President Donald trump to hold and find its ways not to regulate Libra unless they are not solve the problem addressing anti-money laundering and know-your-customers issues.

When politics wants to come to the cryptocurrency, I think we will see there are so many interests from the politicians that want to control the cryptocurrency. I think the US governments warn Facebook that they want to control facebook indirectly and I think they will do that by secretly. We don't know what the US governments plan to Facebook, but so far, we know that they want to control many things in all countries.

no it doesn't. bitcoin is threatening their monopoly, what Facebook coin can do is to threaten banks monopoly in processing money transfer and do that without a license. and that is the big scare they have, they want to have the power of controlling all the USD money transfers and take the taxes, fees and not to mention all the information they gather about who has what amount of money and where they spend it.

Maybe the government has fear on it, because we all know how facebook itself dominates in the world in terms of business, then now they will be introducing a new stablecoin called libra, it could be possible and might be its a threat for US financial system, im not really sure, because libra is not yet out in the market this time.

While I do not have a single opinion about the Libra coin, however, I will be happy to watch as one of the world's financial giants conflicts with the US government because of the information and financial impact on the population of the Earth.
The emergence of such a coin as Libra can have far-reaching consequences. This is already understood in the US Congress. Moreover, for the cryptocurrency, this coin will have both a positive and a negative role.

I see that America is upbeat about the Libra coin. Even President Trump specified that Facebook and Zuckerberg will have to obtain a banking charter and subject the Libra coin to every conventions and regulation under the US law. While it is fair, I still believe that America and Trump is conscious of their actions because Libra coin may consider launching from Malta or other cryptocurrency friendly countries

I kinda agree with your opinion esp. the tension between Iran/China-US tension in economy trade. And facebook plans to creat their own digital money and partnered with several huge companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Ebay, Uber and etc.

Libra has been supported by large companies in the world. not just one or two. they joined and supported Facebook launching libra next year. this will be a big break in the market, we will see how the libra will be prepared for the crypto community.

I think the US Congress is afraid of Facebook's Libra, which threatens the domination of USD on the world money market. As we all know countries exchange goods with each other in USD. Because Facebook has more than 2 billion users, Libra users will be extremely large. Therefore, the USD may not be used in the procurement of goods among people of different countries.

I do not really understand what makes government somehow go against facebook in every aspect. I have seen that usa government allowing banks to ruin the american economy and then pay them back for the mistakes they did and let them continue doing their horrible methods the way they want scott free without any punishment at all. Then they are going against facebook for privacy reasons and now against Libra for the same reasons and put SEC in charge of checking it out.

Look I am against facebooks privacy breaching as much as the next guy but if you are so against facebooks shady workings why are you not doing the same thing for JP Morgan or any other huge corporation? They have literally ruined NATIONS with their horrible judgement of finances, letting them go but bothering Facebook makes no sense at all.

We maybe won't see any Libra or Facebook coins. Governments and banks don't want to lose the control of the economy. They are going to do what they can to preserve their power.
https://www.rt.com/business/464169-bill-big-tech-cryptocurrency/

The existence of this news certainly can make a negative issue with the coin carried by Facebook, Libra coin. However, we cannot consider how much influence we will face. In my opinion, Facebook coins will remain global and grow rapidly. especially Facebook is not a new platform. This is a large platform that has been known to all people of the world.

This news can have both negative and positive effects on the new introduced coin by facebook. Still not convinced personally hoe they intend to run about and observing

What is bad for United States is good for Russia.

If a Russian social media platform would get involved in crypto I doubt the Russian goverment would be as appreciative.

Oh wait, that already happened. Remember the Telegram TON ICO and the resulting crackdown?

Yes, we already know the pros and cons of this coin because of the big hype. US government are not just hare Facebook coi or Libra there’s a big hidden secret on that and right now we slowly feeling it. US President Donald Trump shockingly made a big comment about bitcoin and other cryptocurrency, they are slowly doing a black propaganda agaisnt the good future.

I think this is fear from the United States of the world financial changes, if Facebook succeeded in creating their tokens, the world's money circulation will experience inflation, which the US will experience a shock because many countries will escape their burden of dependence on US. I think Facebook must dare to take a stand by ignoring American legislators.

Currency vs Crypto Currency wars starts here.
Trump is going to ban all crypto currencies because of facebook libra.
They already give some penalty for facebook and it will continue.

I think this is basically US government saying of "if you are going to make money from money then we want a share of it", look at wall street, they are basically bribing the politicians to keep doing the shady business methods they have however at the same time they have to keep bribing them otherwise politicians will start to squeak and they will put regular regulations on top of the loose regulations there is and would make them lose a lot of money, that is why its both a bribe but blackmail at the same time.

Government wants the same from facebook as well, if they have enough money to build a whole network of money that can be transferred globally then they could simply afford to bribe their way into congress and other parts which would be expected of them to do .

They are protecting their interest, they want to regulate Libra like many others and when they are the regulator no one is above them, not above the financial system that they created and I believe bank will always be the leading financial sector in the world.

Facebook can't afford to lose US market while the US won't lose Facebook. They would come into agreement of issuing the coin and making Facebook and its currency the universal spying tool for the US government the same way Facebook has been doing in the past.

I think Facebook can still survive without Libra if the US government is getting Libra nightmares. In addition, Libra is going to be in the market soon and people across the US will use it as well because the team management on the back of Libra has already discussed and made deals with the leading banks in the US. In addition, the government might not be too pressing to kill the coin.

Trump already stated that if they want to be a bank they should apply to be one and to be under the government jurisdictions just like all the banks that's operating in the US soil, they do not want things to get out of hand this early and they want to stop any scenarios that can give Facebook a share of that monopoly.

I think Facebook will eventually release Libra. Because the existing financial order is not easy to break. Facebook may eventually compromise to accept government regulation and control.

From what Trump has mentioned, its obvious that it will not be easy for Facebook to launch and to get Libra worked.
"Don't try to be a bank. If they want to be a bank, apply for bank entity", is one of the message from trump on Twitter.

I hope now the things are not in Facebook way, which the government will treat Libra coin as fake one. So Facebook libra will follow their rules and regulations, in order to launch the Facebook libra coin.

It's not about administrative issues but US has already declared through its draft that already published in the congress if US against the facebook idea to issue its first token because it has a chance to disrupt the traditional banker system that already built by the bankers in US. it's a serious problem.

I think facebook must have done their homework in something like this and they wouldn't find anything wrong with it.

Governments job is to check these things out so of course they will have a meeting and see how it works out and how it will be made etc etc but in the end if Facebook has done everything they should have done and there is nothing illegal with it then they have nothing to fear, there is no scenario where government is not checking it out, even if it is by the book and everything is done legally they would have to check it in order to find if there is anything wrong and if they don't then they will just let them work on it. This is purely for show reasons so government can say that they did whatever they can and checked and found nothing wrong.

I really dont agree with Facebook venturing into the crypto space... but I think the world power are afraid..  this may lead to another form of non governmental uprising

People may be forced to dish the United states dollar if this is successful... but the question here is , how decentralized will this currency be ?? Knowing the history of Facebook

Facebook is being seen as a threat to the US government. Mark Zuckerberg already has too much power with Facebook and people's data. Giving him power to control cryptocurrency in Libra will threaten the US dollar

Hard to say what's worse.. the governmental control or a cartel like this libra. Anyway it's good that they are fighting, to give more visibility to this subject. They can stop a centralized currency but not bitcoin.

I think Libra coin will not threaten US dollars because Libra coins are backed up by fiat currencies such as dollars, euros and pounds. Precisely with Libra coin, the use of digital dollars will be more massive and reduce paper money transactions because every Libra coin is printed, dollars will also be printed to back it up

I quite agree about that but it looks like after facebook hearing we will give an answer about will US give permission for facebook or not. I guess US will because IMF has already announced if its organization wants to create its own crypto. Global tokenizations will be real.

The US government has found that they are apprehensive with the information of 2 billion users. If they establish Libra money, it will greatly affect their current traditional finance. That's why President Trump tweeted that if Facebook wanted to, follow the way to set up a traditional bank

It seems to me that you need to understand the risks of such a new financial system that wants to create Facebook. I'm on the side of the United States.

Mark is a smart guy and intelligent to create a system that will totally affect or disregard the system of the government, he would not want to have any challenge too with the government and I believe that any system he is creating may likely even benefit the government more.

Government will surely be threatened after knowing what the blockchain technology is all about, and the fear or hatred they have for one of the products that was produced out of it, they are yet to see the negative impact of cryptocurrency on them and they are watching slowly to see how it gradually gets adopted, and what will be the outcome of its adoption.

With Facebook adoption, it means there will be sharp adoption which will override the way they gradually monitor the adoption for them to know if the use of cryptocurrency will have negative impact, but I am sure that Facebook will end up helping them in creating the centralized system they wished for.

If the government are really having issue with the Libra coin, there is no way that Libra will also succeed partnering with these banks because most of these banks are under government and they all work by government policy, before those banks can implement anything that will be used by the citizens financially, it has to go through the central bank and the central bank must seek approval from the government, except in countries where central bank is independent, but in my country central bank is solely dependent on the government.

Like you said, I do not see Libra coin really having such challenge because it seems there system will allay the fears of the government as regards cryptocurrency and since they are simply just building a centralized coin, I think that has already settled their issue with government.

I like Us gov more than Libra because facebook created Libra and they know too much about users around the world.  They will threaten users' privacy.  I will choose Us Gov, I am anonymous and safe.

That's wrong, faceobook users now are billions in numbers, they have agree to submit their information and their photos and that's already a threat.
Government concern is only the regulatory side, they won't allow Libra to launch without complying those first.

I think Google recorded Facebook having about 1.7 million users in their database, let us assume that they have like 1.2 billion active users who would be aware of the coin, because I am sure that Facebook will run some promotions that will make the Libra coin known to the active users.

At least 10 to 30% of those active users will surely be interested on what the Libra coin is all about and adopt it which will also be a plus to bitcoin and Ethereum, because I learnt that people will be able to use Bitcoin and Ethereum alone to buy the Libra coin, and this also means massive adoption for bitcoin which will make the price rise since there will be so much demand for those coins, and the higher the demand, the higher the value rises. Facebook is really going to be a blessing in disguise to the cryptocurrency space.

Once you are using the facebook, it would be easy for them to make a promotion so Libra will be noticed by the facebook users, they are in control on this, if they can promote other company or business, for sure they can do better with their own.

I just see all these as bureaucracy, people have been making payments to Facebook advert without any complain, and they have been running this smoothly for a long time with their partnership with credit cards, PayPal and the rest, so what other additional benefit will Facebook add to them.

One of the reasons why blockchain was development was to first eliminate third party, which may lead to reduced cost of doing business, but in this case of Facebook, I have not rally seen where this will fit in because they are not creating a decentralized system, the coin Libra will still need to be purchased by fiat which will still require the use of credit and debit card while some people will still use PayPal too. This is why I just see it as duplication of system that as never given any issue, their coin is just like proffering solution to a problem that does not exist.

Well, two things I see about Facebook’s plan to introduce its own currency is that it may Make and it may Mar the cryptocurrency industry, it will make the cryptocurrency industry in the sense that it will introduce cryptocurrency to virtually over 2 billion of its users and once these people know about crypto and pickinterest in it, then that maybe be a bygone for the traditional banks operating, but if this is the case, government would always want the establishment of traditional banks that they can easily have control over, and they might all team up with other government to declare cryptocurrency as illegal, so I don’t know which side Facebook will take.

Government don’t like cryptocurrency, but they can still make do with the level of compliance it is now and the little awareness going round, but with Facebook coin, crypto compliance will become high which they would not want.

US government is made up of smart people and they really realize the potential risk of Facebook Libra Coin. Facebook nows everything about you, give them an ability to manage money and states will no longer be needed.