I was inspired to write some thoughts after reading this:
https://www.publish0x.com/cryptographic-alchemy/we-do-not-trust-them-remembering-libra-xkklnxo
So, thank you alquimista1501 for the insightful article- well done!
Gordon is in the mood to elaborate on some things on the same topic.
First off, I appreciate reading from someone of a similar perspective that there are sincere reasons to be concerned from a Libra token/coin. Can we just call is ZuckCoin? There is a great potential for things that could in fact zuck about it.
For many years, there have been people who have warned against the potential for individual companies becoming so big and powerful, largely due to technology, that they would be able to in essence act as leaders of their own countries. With an economic top tier platform, they would be tyrants, dictators of their own platforms. Those warnings certainly point to an accurate and reasonable concern.
We see censorship of the worst kind, technocracy, meaning that machine learning and smart software is able to work with simple analytics and algorithms to produce much more complex results than if the same were simply done with the humans who originate the code. It only takes a few steps in the wrong direction (there come the dance analogies again!... It's a crypto twitter thing... you wouldn't understand lol) to find ourselves giving away our data for free, while placing ourselves in an online debtor's prison at the same time.
What do I mean? Take the best example, China's Sesame Credit, where we seem to be heading very quickly. Individuals have their social interaction online, and in person, tied to their credit scores and capabilities in the market place. If you say unsavory things about the CCP, you may find more than a frowny face or a thumbs down. If your friends agree, they can take a journey to devaluation along with you. But, if they turn you in, they get a bonus! Whoooopie! (not Goldberg... just the sound). On Facebook, it isn't hard to imagine the things the Zuckmeister has been accused of, and there are employees on FB, Twitter, Pinterest and others who have stated the work they've been instructed to do, to add specific dissenters into the blacklist code. The band RUSH was right so many times... in this case "conform or be cast out" seems to be the theme for 2020. I don't like the direction it's headed.
So, for me, Libra represents irony in its name, but more so if it caused distance with SO many tech companies, you hafta think Facebook is damaged goods in the totalitarian playing field. 5 years ago I thought the worst thing about it was how ridiculously poorly designed it's navigation and organization was. I could not understand how people, even those a good bit older than myself, could even find each other on there, let alone form communities and share pictures. Every year around Gordon's birthday, I end up thanking people for nice comments in the wrong message threads. How is that even possible?
Therefore, so, and so on... doesn't Facebook money just sound swell? Nah. But, something tells me 100,000,000 users by 2022 isn't unlikely. The more they zuck, the more they seem to thrive. From evil Mark memes to caviar dreams, I have a strong feeling FB will be announcing just after the jealous PayPal month winds down. Gordon tends to be right about these things, even though and especially when, he doesn't want to be.
I believe Libra is going to happen. I believe it is going to be incredibly well designed and usable inside the FB marketplace, and it will bring to the surface that dividing line between government coins and the REAL crypto market.
I'm going to leave a little trail of breadcrumbs here where one thought ends and another begins, because I think the bigger issue here is something I revisit from time to time, and it is this: people in crypto who are desperate to see mass adoption, think that everything big, is good for crypto. XRP works with Bank of America... awesome mass adoption! Starbucks wants to have an e-pay wallet thingie from the Intercontinental Exchange... yeeeeeehaw mass adoption! CME, India, regulatory clarity, not to mention the biggest signals, Gordon getting a tweet from the Winklevi, Litecoin's Charlie, the amazing GEEQ squad and Vitalik... hey you gotta take the small victories when they come, because 2020 proves they may be few and far between! Okay, I can see how you probably missed some of those. But seriously, sometimes it isn't so bad to just think things through. Not everything that is BIG for crypto, is necessarily GOOD for crypto. Mass adoption because people want a store of value that they trust more than their governments? That is a good idea. Store of value that they regularly, occasionally move from one safe wallet to another, just in case regulatory concerns or even programming back-ends mean nothing is perfectly safe all the time, with exchanges showing resilience with multi-sig cold wallets... good things! JP Morgan coin being a reason someone gets into crypto? Meh. I don't like greedy traitors. Traders=Good. Traitors=Bad.
Gordon probably had more to vent about than just Facebook... you think? Yeah.
But, to wrap this up, I really enjoyed the read that initially inspired this rantathon, and to back that up, maybe some good things come out of Facebook and their not-so-freedom coin. Perhaps it simply helps the U.S. to position itself like it cares about the market. Perhaps it places us in a spot where U.S. exchanges get competitive for the retail trader and not just institutional. Perhaps it starts to place a little more American positivity back into the mix, because we've sure spent a long year making sure the world knows just how crap things can get here.
Peace, love, hope, faith, and victory. Those are things I can get behind. In fact, they are things one can probably program just as easily and electro-equity, which is just simply a bad idea for bad code. Should Facebook make a coin, perhaps it should be called totalitariatoken? There's a very good chance that programming our status on compliance will make its way right into the core foundation of smart spending. No thanks. I love my technology, but my spending habits are mine to understand... not the Zuckburger's.
And on that incredibly twisty, windy, long, intentionally curvy road to nowhere, where often we find reason that surpasses order,
Gordon Freeman out.
