Poor comment
"You (El Reg) have every right to attack Facebook. But please at least give us a reasoned argument, rather than an ill-considered rant!"
They already did this before. And the politicians are doing it, both before and now. But Facebook isn't listening and still singing the same tune, so sarcasm is perhaps a better route.
"Facebook has every right to evangelise its proposals, which seem to be the subject of the article."
And we have every right to take the piss. Which is the subject of this article.
"You can disagree with those proposals"
Oh thank you for permission. You probably meant 'you might disagree...'.
"(as some politicians are doing)"
More or less as everyone other than Facebook is doing. Nobody not employed by them is saying this is a good thing.
"AFAICS Facebook is not arrogantly saying "you're wrong" as characterised in the article; rather it's arguing "we're right, and here's why"."
No, they are saying 'we're right, because [waffle]'.
"Also for what it's worth, I haven't dabbled in any cryptocurrency. But it seems to me that the Libra looks like a big advance on Bitcoin by virtue of being backed by 'real' currency."
Not really. You give Facebook real currency, and they give you funbucks. If you try to change your funbucks for a different currency then Facebook has to either dip into its reserves of that currency, or do some FX trading.
So, like a bank. A global bank that is not beholden to any regulators anywhere.
"Insofar as that's a Bad Thing, it's because those currencies are themselves routinely debased by governments and by fractional reserve (banks)."
FRB is not the bogeyman that everyone who hasn't understood the 30-minute seminar on it seems to think it is. FRB is just where a loan to someone else is also considered an asset. If I lend you money, the fact that you owe me money means I hold an asset. People who say FRB debases currency don't seem to grasp that that asset has a monetary value, and when you include that on the balance sheet, banks are at (more or less) 100% reserve, in fact above that usually.
100% backed up lending is impossible unless you want to lent money only by billionaires. All banking is FRB.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
