Wealthy Technocrats Want to Control Movement of Money

by: Chicago48

The problem with cryto NOW is that you can't buy anything with it.  Try finding a store that will trade Crypto.  And it won't be long before the US Govt finds a way to shut it down because it skirts the Dollar.  And if they think that poor people in the US will use it, they're fooling themselves.  It will work best overseas in 3rd world countries, ala Africa.  But Africa already has a way of exchanging money through the cell phone.
I wouldn't trust anything with an algorithm.

by: Moonwishes

I'm not in the least interested in cryptocurrency at this point. However, I am concerned with their keeping including 'poor' people in the equation for some reason. I don't know how they plan to do that, but poor people in the USA are generally extremely wealthy as compared to the poor in third world countries. Many of the poor here have their cell phones, computers of some type, TVs and cable or downloaded TV shows, etc.

In third world countries, where women/children have to walk a mile or two daily, to find enough water to bring home to meet their needs for the day. Newborns die regularly due to lack of proper prenatal care, lack of adequate housing, lack of adequate nutritious food, lack of utilities like electricity, the list is huge! These people have many beliefs in spirits and strange customs that I can't see them thinking that they have to contact their ancestors before getting medical care for a child are going to easily slip right past REAL money and go for spirit money that is only in the cell phones that some have.  Some may manage to have a functioning cell phone, but other than that, I can't see how crypto will help them in any way. Are they going to sell on line? Perhaps have a micro business, but I can't see them wanting to take some payment over their cell phone but no one will use it in return to allow them to buy from them. The poor need real money that they can exchange for goods and services under any circumstances. Not via a cell phone that hasn't been charged for weeks as the electric in their village is turned off/broken.

by: DevilishlySarky

Poor people ?

Why when you havent got two buttons to rub together , are two weeks in arrears with your rent , and havent had a decent meal for a week ; are you going to be bothered with Crypto currency .....

Rich people trying to get richer by promising poor people easy money , is more like it  

by: The End

Crypto currency is Contagion waiting to infect all.
We can't let this get off the ground or we'll lose everything.
Trust me.
I was thrown off the "Seeking Alpha" website for predicting the Brexit affair TEN YEARS before it became reality.
They wouldn't take "No" for an answer.
This is even MORE DESTRUCTIVE.
STOP CRYPTO CURRENCY.

by: The End

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, has an agenda and YOU'RE NOT IN IT.
And we all know how many businesses PayPal has killed so far.
Crypto currency gives Mr. Thiel the ability to hold your "Points" indefinitely. And there won't be a Damn thing you can do about it.
You will be at the mercy of the brainless.
They're trying to Slowly back us into a corner.
How do you boil a frog ? SLOWLY.
STOP CRYPTO CURRENCY.

by: purpleiris

I don't trust any form of cryptocurrency. Furthermore, it does have the potential to ruin a country's economy by devaluing its own currency. We already have a big enough problem with that due to Mexicans working in America sending their American money to family in Mexico.

I doubt it will get off the ground any time soon, if ever. They've apparently been trying to get something going for a while now to no avail. I'm sure that's due to its lack of popularity with consumers.

by: FidoMaster

Most the population has no idea how blockchain or cryptocurrencies work (apparently this includes eBay CEO Devin Wenig, who refered to it as ''The blockchain'' in a Tweet yesterday saying, ''The Blockchain has the potential to lower cost and facilitate cross border transactions in marketplaces.'' (as if ''Blockchain'' is a singular massive network like ''The internet'').

(Wenig on ''THE Blockchain'' 👉http://bit.ly/2MV9ONs)

That's akin to Wenig saying, ''THE Artificial Intelligence (or ''The Machine Learning'' has the potential to lower cost and facilitate cross border transactions in marketplaces.''

~~~~~~~~~

Anyways...

I agree - when the top 1% of the 1% start telling the poor and disenfranchised how their monetary system is going to benefit them, be wary...*especially* considering it's FaceBook as the sponsor who asserts members are, ''committed to working with authorities to SHAPE A REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT'' (emphasis mine).  

FB, a company that has struggled significantly to maintain security of non-critical assets, how are they to be expected to maintain security of this data? (yea, yea, I know they've spit-off the ''Calibra'' subsidiary).

These founding members all paid the $10 million admission fee to be part of the Libra club (truly peanuts to eBay - that's a million bucks less than the bonuses Wendy Jones, who heads eBay's customer service and trust received last year, and about 8 million bucks less than Wenig's total comp).

But who isn't on the list? The rest of the FAANGS, notably Google (Alphabet), Amazon, and Apple. Oh, yeah... and the banks.

~~~~~~~~~~

And then there's the timing of the release to dominate the news cycle (which for eBay, given the impact of Libra dominating the news cycle no journo is interested in digging into why eBay apparently flip-flopped from their cypto isn't part of our strategy a few short weeks ago).

This also reminds me of PayPal's (also part of Libra) carefully timed releases of their Cambridge blockchain investment early April. That news completely dominated the news cycle and buried the fact that PayPal updated their stateside UA with their return-fee moneygrab which would punish sellers and merchants with consumer-friendly return policies (I have an updated theory on this too, for another time), but suffice to say reports of the death of PayPal's moneygrab are greatly exaggerated.

I checked last week and the clause is still there, it's simply dormant and unenforced for the time being (the same way eBay isn't really enforcing things like their image policies, but they're still in the guidelines and could be enforced at any point eBay deemed it to its' benefit to do so).

If PayPal is truly going to reverse this decision, they need to update the UA, push a note in the policy update page, and naturally update the help pages. Until then, this refund-fee moneygrab is simply not being enforced.

Media manipulation (check into PIerre's involvement in media manipulation too..just sayin'), benevolent and altruistic promises from the world's most wealthy elites, and unreliable security...do consumers really need *more* reasons to stay away from Libra coin?

by: purpleiris

In regards to PayPal's money grab, I'm sure that clause was created with eBay in mind. Now you have Etsy talking about a return guarantee. So, PayPal has to protect itself somehow and the ones to blame would be the marketplaces that think they own our businesses.

So, I don't blame them for keeping it in place. It could just be that they will enforce it on a case-by-case basis so they have recourse against repeat offenders. Mind you, that could mean every eBay seller, and eventually every Etsy seller, due to their liberal return policies. However, it wouldn't make sense if a seller isn't known for frequent returns.

That leads me to believe that it's more of a protection against fraudulent sellers than it is ALL sellers.

by: Tinysaur

What better way to take Russian or other currencies for political meddling?

by: purpleiris

P.S. -- Sorry, I meant to say that I agree with your reasoning for not trusting it. While I didn't have the players in mind at the time, I don't feel it would be secure enough no matter who's running it. Electronic-based transactions and accounts can be so easily manipulated and hacked into.

Hackers currently target the most popular options used, so just imagine how big a target cryptocurrency would be. Particularly since it would seem that it's those on the dark web or otherwise involved in illegal activity who like to use it (ie, the Wikileaks guy).

by: RKTOYS

I don't trust cryptocurrency any more than I trust the push to go cashless.

Square has been spamming me to death about going cashless and how "everybody" wants to go cashless.  Their "research" is flawed in that they expect me to use the app to record cash purchases.  Why the hell would I do that?  It's an even bigger waste of time/effort than they want me to think handling cash at all is.  Oh me, oh my, so hard to carry a stack of bills to the bank or ATM?  Please.

by: NoMoreEbay

Kik which has around 300 million members released Kin crypto in 2017. It's lost so much value it's almost worthless today.  I actually bought 2 million tokens for $130. When I finally sold it, I got back $28. It literally took me two full days to figure out how to buy it, put it in my wallet, then ultimately sell it. You have to buy it, then convert it to Etherium, then 10 more steps with transaction fees along the way. It's a mess. It's not this complicated however with the major indexes like Bitcoin and Etherium but complicated still. You still have to decide whether you want a USB wallet or a paper wallet or digital wallet and a host of other things.

In general crypto currency is very unsafe and complicated. Nerds like myself have a hard time figuring out how to use it, nevermind the average person.

With that said, I'm sure a giant like FB will dumb it down as much as possible but at the end of the day it's still block-chain currency and not for the faint of heart. Just ask the owners of the user funds who recently lost 40 million from a Bitcoin hack at a major Exchange.  

by: Barbbie

Moonwishes, I love your post!

This online business is as close as I want to come to cryptocurrency.

I can imagine that all those people who have had their payments stopped or delayed by Amazon, ebay, Paypal, Walmart etc would love to be part of a magic money that can just be wiped out by a computer hacker or withheld over some bot's poor programming or a big shots whim or if Facebook decides you said something they don't agree with.

Although I doubt most poor people will actually have the ability to purchase this money,  there is no doubt that some people are easily influenced and will fall for this on Facebook, etc, even if they are spending their last dollar to do it.  I believe their vulnerability is what these rich people are counting on.  People do spend money they don't really have on get rich schemes, gambling, cell phone game and itune credits, drinking and smoking so this is a promising crowd for these wealthy guys to go for.  

As for Amazon, all they have to do is eventually require the sellers to take it and the buyers to use it and most of these people will just go with it.  

by: epuise

Just what we need... another way the top 1% can control us... No, thanks... I'll stick to paper money & coins.

by: epuise

Just like eBay's 'Mangled Payments'... these 'sites' will 'promote' the Crypt Currency (not a typo)... It will be blasted across the page... 'Sellers' (scammers) who sign up will get 'the badge' encouraging more dupes to join... Decent people will be lured in to 'try' it w/ 'promises' of 'free', low fees, perks... BEWARE...  

by: Moonwishes

>>Square has been spamming me to death about going cashless and how "everybody" wants to go cashless.  Their "research" is flawed in that they expect me to use the app to record cash purchases. <<

Not everyone wants to go cashless. I sure don't. So yeas their research is flawed, as any research would be if they go into it with a pre-conceived notion. I don't know if this research was set up that way, but I would guess it was as the only way to get the result of 'everyone wants to go cashless'. I can tell you a huge group of people that most likely would refuse, at least a large majority and that is the Conservative Religous Groups. You know, the ones many laugh at. Preachers from their pulpits would be dissing cryptocurrency constantly telling their congregations to note get into that. They would see this absolutely as the mark of the beast. Don't want to get into religion here, just giving an example of how that research could have in no way come back with that result. And then you also have the many others that think this is a very stupid idea if nothing else!  

by: mcposty

there is already crypto currency.

I dont want to ever deal with any currency ran by facebook or any corporation who will ultimately have their own interests involved, such as denying people the right to money exchange who they deem " inappropraite".

Facebook and coporations already are in the hot seat for political manipulations and heavy handed censorship of consrrvatives, as well as manipulating political ads.

NO THANKS FACEBOOK GO TO THE ABYSS

by: Whatever

I'll just keep hanging onto my silver and gold thank you. When the revolution starts I'll need it to trade for food.

by: mcposty

I can see it now: i'm sorry, but you no longer have access to your crypto-funds. The reason: A statement you made on social media 2 years ago was "problematic". There will be no trials, no appeals. and any attempt to circumvent this policy will constitute fraud and be punishable by the full measure of the law. Also, you voted for a republican, you don't deserve to use money.

by: RKTOYS

The desire to control others isn't limited to the left.  It's a money issue - the moneyed just hide it behind euphemisms like the invisible hand.  When you control the market or government, its actions aren't some natural force, they're yours.