<story><title>Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/11/20910330/mastercard-stripe-ebay-facebook-libra-association-withdrawal-cryptocurrency</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lucasverra</author><text>David Marcus update [1] :&lt;p&gt;Special thanks to @Visa and @Mastercard for sticking it out until the 11th hour. The pressure has been intense (understatement), and I respect their decision to wait until there’s regulatory clarity for @Libra_ to proceed, vs. the invoked threats (by many) on their biz.&lt;p&gt;I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update. Of course, it’s not great news in the short term, but in a way it’s liberating. Stay tuned for more very soon. Change of this magnitude is hard. You know you’re on to something when so much pressure builds up.&lt;p&gt;[1]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;davidmarcus&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1182775728431087623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;davidmarcus&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1182775728431087623&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Illniyar</author><text>Since Libra isn&amp;#x27;t distributed, in the sense that anyone can start mining it, one of the key premises for its trust was that governance and operation will be handled by a group of powerful and trustworthy companies.&lt;p&gt;The more companies leave the initiative the more centralized it becomes and the less its trust model is valid. If only Facebook remains it isn&amp;#x27;t any different than a simple virtual currency (like the discontinued Facebook Credits).&lt;p&gt;And to preempt the argument that visa and mastercard aren&amp;#x27;t trustworthy - there is an inherent trust that most people give to big companies because their processes and checks and balances developed over years to be robust - usually from having to handle lawsuits and regulations which small companies rarely do.</text></comment>
<story><title>Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/11/20910330/mastercard-stripe-ebay-facebook-libra-association-withdrawal-cryptocurrency</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lucasverra</author><text>David Marcus update [1] :&lt;p&gt;Special thanks to @Visa and @Mastercard for sticking it out until the 11th hour. The pressure has been intense (understatement), and I respect their decision to wait until there’s regulatory clarity for @Libra_ to proceed, vs. the invoked threats (by many) on their biz.&lt;p&gt;I would caution against reading the fate of Libra into this update. Of course, it’s not great news in the short term, but in a way it’s liberating. Stay tuned for more very soon. Change of this magnitude is hard. You know you’re on to something when so much pressure builds up.&lt;p&gt;[1]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;davidmarcus&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1182775728431087623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;twitter.com&amp;#x2F;davidmarcus&amp;#x2F;status&amp;#x2F;1182775728431087623&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>john_moscow</author><text>The fate of Libra isn&amp;#x27;t tied to Visa&amp;#x2F;Mastercard&amp;#x27;s withdrawal. It&amp;#x27;s ultimately about whether there is a market for a new mechanism for international money transfers.&lt;p&gt;As someone who runs a business that has (small) offices both in EU and North America, let me share a quick overview of the current state of things.&lt;p&gt;When you want to transfer a non-trivial amount of money between 2 countries, you have likely received it in the originating country&amp;#x27;s currency and are planning to spend it in the destination currency. Now because you don&amp;#x27;t want to pay ~3% currency exchange fees to your bank, the only reasonable way to do this is to get an account with a business forex broker, that will offer you a rate in the ballpark of 0.5% off the spot price. You will have to do the KYC&amp;#x2F;AML [0], but the complexity of the whole transfer is basically this:&lt;p&gt;1. Do a domestic wire to your broker&amp;#x27;s office in the originating economic zone.&lt;p&gt;2. Wait for them to call you and confirm the exchange rate.&lt;p&gt;3. Receive a domestic wire from the broker&amp;#x27;s office in the destination economic zone.&lt;p&gt;You often need to show the invoices&amp;#x2F;contracts showing the origin of the funds and the purpose of the transfer, but if you are running a legitimate business that pays taxes, you will need those for accounting reasons anyway.&lt;p&gt;Now the 0.5% fee charged by the forex trader (that is bound to a bunch of rules and regulations making it harder for it to run away with your funds) is not worth putting your trust into a fully automated distributed ledger, where a lost password or a hacked computer could permanently eat away your money without any legal recourse.&lt;p&gt;So the only potential audience of a new international coin would be people actively trying to evade KYC&amp;#x2F;AML and that&amp;#x27;s exactly why the governments will do their best to prevent it from getting adoption (which is very easy since you can outright ban the fiat endpoints in your jurisdiction).&lt;p&gt;On the other end, there&amp;#x27;s a bunch of people who have never written a response to an AML inquiry and have hardly done any business outside of their own state, that are hoping to get rich quick by grabbing a stake at something they haven&amp;#x27;t fully researched and later reselling it at a profit to someone who will actually need it. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t see any reason for it to be successful long-term, sorry.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Know_your_customer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Know_your_customer&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>