Cryp-No Currency - Visa, Mastercard, eBay, & Others Exit Facebook's Cryptocurrency Campaign

[jiyeon]

Source: The Verge

 

Major investors (can we even call them that anymore?) Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe, & Mercado Pago have withdrawn from Facebook's Libra cryoptocurrency association. This comes after eBay started the exits last week.

 

Quote

Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe, and Mercado Pago have all withdrawn from the Libra Association, dealing a major blow to Facebook’s plans for a distributed, global cryptocurrency. The withdrawals were first reported by the Financial Times and Bloomberg.

 

A Visa spokesperson told The Verge. “Visa has decided not to join the Libra Association at this time,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to evaluate and our ultimate decision will be determined by a number of factors, including the Association’s ability to fully satisfy all requisite regulatory expectations.”

 

The withdrawals leave Libra with no major US payment processor, a serious issue for the fledgling project. They also come just one week after PayPal (eBay’s former subsidiary) withdrew from the association.

 

eBay & Stripe gave statements on their stance on the Facebook Libra Association:

 

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“We highly respect the vision of the Libra Association,” eBay said in a statement. “However, eBay has made the decision to not move forward as a founding member. At this time, we are focused on rolling out eBay’s managed payments experience for our customers.”

 

Stripe gave a similar explanation for its withdrawal. “Stripe is supportive of projects that aim to make online commerce more accessible for people around the world,” the company said. “Libra has this potential. We will follow its progress closely and remain open to working with the Libra Association at a later stage.” Mastercard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

Libra's Dante Disparte then responded to the exits by shedding light upon the situation and giving a final word on the association.

 

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“We are focused on moving forward and continuing to build a strong association of some of the world’s leading enterprises, social impact organizations and other stakeholders,” Disparte said. “We look forward to the inaugural Libra Association Council meeting in just 3 days and announcing the initial members of the Libra Association.”

 

I don't follow cryptocurrencies at all, but the fact tha eBay, Visa, & Mastercard have all pulled out probably says something about what could come out of Facebook's new cryptocurrency campaign. The backers behind Libra still seem ambitious about the campaign so I'm interested to see how it all pans out. It's Facebook though, so don't hold your breath.

[lewdicrous]

3 minutes ago, sowon said:

This comes after eBay started the exits last week.

The other companies probably waited for someone else to exit before they too can leave the sinking ship of a project.

[Tellos]

I think they realized regulations would come the moment a problem occured and that a problem WOULD occur.

[Bacon soup]

the original idea for crypto was for it to be de-centralized. A credit/financial corporation can deploy crypto internally for integreity and auditing purposes, but to sell it to the wider population when they already have centralized money in the form of legal tender? Na, I won't be using Libra fake zuckerbucks.

[Guest]

Zuck bout to retaliate.

[Bananasplit_00]

Hopefully this project wi crash, burn and be remembered as a dumpster fire for all of history

[Tristerin]

As secure as the services I use for crypto...just the thought of anything FB related would push me away completely.

 

To access my crypto wallet you have to have the 27 word passphrase...FB would just leave that in a text file somewhere waiting to be found lol.

 

Major companies not participating is typically political, as they don't care as long as its profitable.  

[Kisai]

On 10/12/2019 at 10:57 AM, lewdicrous said:

The other companies probably waited for someone else to exit before they too can leave the sinking ship of a project.

Eh, no.

 

These companies all smelled the regulation coming and don't want to be be part of the manure pile Facebook jumped face first into. They initially backed it because they didn't want it to be the next Apple Pay and not benefit from it again.

 

The "cryptocoin" tech is fairly sound, but the potential for it to be misused is astronomical. There is no way a legitimate company would want to be involved in creating any kind of cryptocoin that might undermine the domestic banking system. 

 

Bitcoin, Etherium, and so forth are all rubbish, they are Ponzi schemes, and once a true answer to a global currency arrives, these will have no value. Till then, they're today's penny-stock pump-and-dump, and used primarily by people laundering money.

 

What it will take is a global agreement (which will likely not happen without Mastercard's Cirrus network blessing) for this currency to be available on all banking networks, otherwise it would be relegated to an app that may end up banned or regulated in some countries, narrowing or eliminating it's potential. See how we have problems with data privacy already with multinationals like Google and Facebook already.

 

Another problem is that money laundering will always find a way, so things that enable it, will always be regulated out of existance. It's currently popular to launder money through online games by converting game card time into money, and that's something that still goes unregulated. It will take a crackdown on "micro -transactions" for that to end.

[mr moose]

Much to the ire of many people who don't understand economies beyond pocket money -  master card, visa etc have always been cautious about interacting with currencies that lack conventional regulation.  Mastercard CEO doesn't like them at all, and Visa CEO says they engage if the global market embraces blockchain currencies.  But neither are concerned about their existence right now.   I think what people tend to forget is that it is not the currencies that dictate if they are regulated and how, but economic forces that underpin whole economies is what controls the value of any one currency. 

 

just my 2c.

[yourfriend]

I only recently found out the libra cryptocurrency project is scaled back, but honestly, I didn't even have high hopes about it. It was questionable from the beginning, and indeed, I think some of the companies waited for someone to exit first before they took the last decision to skip the project. I have a Skrill prepaid MasterCard (here are more details about it https://baxity.com/skrill-mastercard ) and as for me it's quite a trustworthy payment system, and it's obvious they won't join an uncertain project. Well, the project is scaled back but not canceled, so the future will show if we're wrong about this crypto, or not.

[mr moose]

On 7/25/2020 at 1:47 AM, yourfriend said:

I only recently found out the libra cryptocurrency project is scaled back, but honestly, I didn't even have high hopes about it. It was questionable from the beginning, and indeed, I think some of the companies waited for someone to exit first before they took the last decision to skip the project.

From the onset all the major financial services companies paid it lip service just in case there was something in it that turned out to be worthwhile.    From everything I have read,  crypto currency brings very little to the table in terms of benefits over current currency technologies. 

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, mr moose said:

From the onset all the major financial services companies paid it lip service just in case there was something in it that turned out to be worthwhile.    From everything I have read,  crypto currency brings very little to the table in terms of benefits over current currency technologies. 

It brings nothing. It's just turning energy into nothing. Hell, some coal plants found they could sell their energy to people running farms of GPU's and/or ASIC's at bulk rates rather than have to shut them down.

[Trik'Stari]

On 10/14/2019 at 1:13 AM, Kisai said:

global currency

Am I the only one who really hates this concept? Mainly because I assume the words "cashless system" are involved with it somewhere.

[Drama Lama]

Ah yes that Libra thing still exists 

[Tellos]

Another issue is zuck wants employees to opt into being paid in it. So we go back to company money you can use only at the company store and they get to decide its value. Basically it's not good companies should never create their own legal tender in my opinion.  History shows it goes bad.

[cj09beira]

On 7/26/2020 at 11:23 AM, Trik'Stari said:

Am I the only one who really hates this concept? Mainly because I assume the words "cashless system" are involved with it somewhere.

one currency over many countries doesn't seem to work particularly well just look at how well Europe is doing

 

[BabaGanuche]

On 7/26/2020 at 6:22 AM, Kisai said:

It brings nothing. It's just turning energy into nothing. Hell, some coal plants found they could sell their energy to people running farms of GPU's and/or ASIC's at bulk rates rather than have to shut them down.

That is not an inherent feature of crypto currency. Bitcoin is based on a proof of work, solving a hash, but they are not required to. Facebook's would not work that way. You should be happy this died that is not a reason.

[Kisai]

On 7/26/2020 at 3:23 AM, Trik'Stari said:

Am I the only one who really hates this concept? Mainly because I assume the words "cashless system" are involved with it somewhere.

A global, "physical cash"-less system would be a godsend because people could be paid instantly, safely, etc

 

However downside:

People can be defrauded, quicklessly, painlessly and people won't even realize it happened. You can't be awake forever.

 

My opinion is that all cryptocurrencies are inherently bad because the incentive is bad. With bitcoin and similar, people are treating it like investments in real gold, which is perilous, since the volatility can turn $1 into $1000 overnight, and then down to $0.01 in a split second before you have a chance to even trade it. It's easily manipulated, and only complete fools invest in it. It has exactly one useful purpose right now, and that's to bypass currency FOREX markets without having the intermediary take two cuts (one from the buyer and one from the seller), however it's ended up being more expensive than FOREX in the long run, so unless you're literately trying to swap millions of dollars for another currency, it's basically worthless to even go this route unless you are dealing entirely in criminal proceeds.

 

Plus there's the entire problem of people forgetting their wallets and it being gone for good, or people who know how to open them die/fake-their-death.

 

Any private entity in control of a global currency is basically bad, if not evil, especially companies like Facebook and Google. The Mickey Mouse Funbucks starts at home, and if these companies royally gave a care about not being evil, they would back their currency with their own restricted stock units. So dealing in "Libra" is literately dealing with shares of the company, and if the company does some evil and the valuation goes down, so does the value of the Facebook Funbucks. That makes it completely fair, and somewhat stable so long as the company isn't run by clowns. Let's turn Facebook into sharecropping shall we, let's make sure every employee paid in the facebook funbucks also gets an equal value in RSU's in case the currency blows up in everyone's face. Oh and while we're at it, make sure you're renting FaceBook FunClosets to sleep in, and FaceBookwear for your corporate uniform.

 

Like, Facebook is literately the kind of deserved corporate mockery found in the book "Jennifer Government" , people who are basically working for BRAND, everything is BRAND.

 

Anyway, I'm all for getting rid of paper/plastic bills and replacing it with an app or physical card, so long as nobody gets to collect a fee from using it.