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Facebook to launch new cryptocurrency?
CaptHenway
Posts: 34,187 ✭✭✭✭✭
Check out the artist's drawing of the Mark Zuckerberg Dime!
Professional Numismatist, Retired. 55 year member ANA. Former ANA Senior Authenticator. Winner of four ANA Heath Literary Awards; three Wayte and Olga Raymond Literary Awards; Numismatist of the Year Award 2009, and ANA Lifetime Achievement Award 2020. Winner of the PNG's 2026 Robert Friedberg Award for "The Enigmatic Lincoln Cents of 1922," Available now from Whitman or Amazon.
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I’ve owned FB stock since day one. I’ve never been on FB once. I’ve never owned crypto but it looks like I might be in that game as well soon
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Fellas, leave the tight pants to the ladies. If I can count the coins in your pockets you better use them to call a tailor. Stay thirsty my friends......
Have none. Want none.
Like I want Facebook involved in my financial life.
1984.
What sort of economic activity backs this imaginary money?
If you can't see it, can't touch it, I'll pass.
Anybody ever find out what happened to that guy with all the passwords who disappeared?
Tulips!
Henways!
Actually the FB crypto is backed with real money. I think it's an effort to speed up bank and regulatory momentum towards a usable global currency. Banks have been dragging their feet as many of the new payment technologies put them at risk of disintermediation.
Ahhhh...the famous "Henway Tulip" found only in Tierra del Fuego's sunny climate. Should have known.
What @shorecoll said: If someone would create an electronic currency that you can just BUY, has the same ease of transfer, but without the "smoke and mirrors" of bit coin, (questionable investment, creating "money" out of nothing, etc.), I would think it would be useful.
Imagine paying for goods directly, without a credit card, or PayPal, or other fee generating middleman? (Ok...initial acquisition might be fee based, and maybe redemption. But once the currency "exists", the flow should keep commerce running at some low level).
About 4 to 5 pounds!
My level of trust with this company is zero. Look for a motive with this move.
Pure silliness, but the Wall Street loves it.
Dave
Just what we never needed. Just in time too!
Nah, that's governmental totalitarianism. It's more like [](http:// "")") The Space Merchants is big business totalitarianism. Big Brother vs. Big Data.
Edited to add: what an odd little linky thing that got put in. Still goes to the right place. Wikipedia entry for a 1950s book called The Space Merchants (by Frederick Pohl). Huge businesses run everything. Governments are small and exist to facilitate business. Advertisers are King.
Really? You would use a digital currency that has no fraud protection rather than a CC that does?
What benevolent entity is going to facilitate transfers for free?
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
I'm assuming you send your message to this board with no fee?
And, no, I wouldn't send someone I didn't KNOW a currency of any kind. But to an established company? Sure.
You're ignoring hackers, dropped bits, etc.
And you're ignoring the second part of the question. No one is going to facilitate this for free. A message board used as advertising isn't the same as financial transactions that need higher security and have liability.
Besides, you already have electronic checks for businesses, Venmo for friends and family, paypal, e-gift cards...
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Forget benevolence. Follow the money to see who gets the skim.
When you to buy online, every retailer has a system for taking your CC number. Not a big deal.
Change that to accepting electronic currency, and where is the added cost? Who are either of us required to pay a fee to for the transaction?
And, yes, I agree that any system is going to have some flaws. I'm certainly not going to convert my 401(k) to crypto currency! But having a bit of electronic currency on hand? Sure...could be convenient.
(Though, if we are talking hackers, dropped bits, computer crashes....I'm already trusting my 401(k) holder to be safe and redundant!)
The way to cut out the 'middleman', would be to NOT use Facebooks digital currency and instead send money directly via Paypal, bank transfer, credit card, debit card etc. There is no benefit for anyone to use facebooks digital currency, except for facebook.
The CC POS system charges to facilitate that transaction. The retailer doesn't process the payment, he pays the processor for each transaction. You want Visa to transfer your free currency in competition with their own?
What you are trying to do is not free unless since benevolent (ahem) entity like Facebook wants to do it.
And what you're describing is basically bitcoin without the encryption making it less safe not more so.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
BTW it is not just Facebook...there were 35 partners at launch, many of whom compete with other players. We will just have to see how it plays out. The conspicuous absentees were big banks and many payment processors.
I use Zelle. It's offered by all major banks. Direct money transfer. No fees to either party. The only caveat I would advise is only use it with well known vendors.
Some apps do this also, but only between individuals, and there have been some problems.
"Seu cabra da peste,
"Sou Mangueira......."
Somewhere there would be an ......enormous..... "float." Ask me when they are identified.
If someone gave you a bad deal you could .....unfriend....them.
Also deserves caution with friends and family. If you can’t trust them with your checkbook/CC then...
Please explain to me how Von Nothaus could be convicted of "counterfeiting" for allegedly developing a currency to compete with the U.S. Dollar (that was one of the bogus theories advanced by the government - the other separate theory being the similarity of the denomination and inscriptions) and yet this is somehow legal? As much as I disagree with his stuff, Von Nothaus deserves a pardon.
It should be called Kleptocurrency.
Look for Facebook to monetize for their own benefit your ownership and use of their currency.
And of course they will somehow track your business.
When I saw the title of this thread, I thought this has the potential to be another solid chapter in the saga I like to think of as: Musings of the Open-Minded Numismatist!
"Look up, old boy, and see what you get." -William Bonney.
Cryptocurrency isn’t cryptocurrency when it’s centralized. Bitcoin, litecoin they are not centralized. These are more like tokens in the crypto world.
Just a joke. Sorry. Stick with the real crypto’s.
My Type Set & My Complete Proof Nickel Set!
Pohl and Kornbluth were way ahead of their time.
The phrase "real cryptos" strikes me as incredibly ironic. All are computer code made up by some private person with no backing. As such what qualifies as a "real" crypto currency in your book? The new proposed one seems just as ludicrous to me as the others.
My first thought.
Collector since 1976. On the CU forums here since 2001.
Decentralized, mineable with halving. That’s the whole point of it...the problem is the public doesn’t understand it.
My Type Set & My Complete Proof Nickel Set!
P. T. Barnum would like this scam.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
Hmmmm, with more and more people starting to do business on facebook...you have to wonder if this is the beginning of a new market place and facebook is moving to facilitate it.
I laughed out loud at the dime...
It's all about what the people want...
And PayPal is somehow not considered a "financial institution"....even though they facilitate transactions, you can deposit/keep/withdraw funds from your personal account with them and you can get loans through them.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financialinstitution.asp
They must have some good lobbyists on the books...
I dabbled with Bitcoin for a few months to check it out. It was crazy to see 23% gains in a single day, of course followed by similarly high drops over a single day. A little info which may be of interest:
This isn’t a crypto currency... they are using block chain tech that is it.
My Type Set & My Complete Proof Nickel Set!
I trust cash and PM's...I investigated, but did not get involved, in cryptocurrency (bitcoin and one or two others)...This entire concept has a long way to go before it is truly legitimized. Sure, people are making money - and losing money...but the government is sure to get involved at some point... and then... and then....Cheers, RickO
Sorry, I'll pass !!! :'(
Why not a CUCoin, PCGSCoin, CACcoin, TrazCoin, Cameonut2011coin, etc., that function in the same way? What makes Bitcoin or Litecoin any different if a new coin has the same features? What makes some coins more "valuable" than others? Who decides? Since the idea is hardly unique, and there are many other competitors with new ones very plausible, why would these electronic tokens hold any value whatsoever? I truly don't get it and am trying to understand those that back them.
Money for nothin' and the chicks are free.
I knew it would happen.
Free chicks? Sign me up!
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
This is company scrip for the 21st century. I hope they can pull it off because the possibilities are fascinating.
If it works, this will add to our freedom, not subtract from it. Just because you’re used to the monetary cage you’re currently in doesn’t mean it’s The best system.
Try carrying your money on a plane.
Or even making a large withdrawal or deposit.
Bring on Facebook bucks.
The US sees this as a threat to it's currency. I don't know if it is or isn't but I do believe, with FB's privacy record, that it will not come to pass.
bob
I have zero trust in Facebook nor any electronic slugs they may try to pass. Next likely heavy fines for getting tossed into their 'jail'.
FFB, as opposed to BFF.