Cryptocurrencies and pros and cons of Facebooks Libra and more on Tech Talk With Craig Peterson today on Maine's WGAN Saturday Show [10-19-19]

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We are discussing cryptocurrencies in general as well as the pros and cons of Facebook's Libra. Listen in to find out why some of their payment company partnerships got cold feet. 

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency loses all but one payment company

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Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

Craig  
Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. We're going to talk a little bit about cryptocurrency right now, Facebook was trying to get into the market, and basically, everybody's bailed on them. So we're going to talk about that and a little bit about Bitcoin and what are the real advantages? What are these guys and gals that are trying to bring the cryptocurrencies to market? What's really behind them and motivating them? I know a number of people who have these crypto currencies that they're trying to sell, and they're just in it for the money, frankly, you know, oh, yeah, it's great. And there are all of these initial coin offerings. You might have seen them these Icos that are out there, that are where people are saying, Yeah, we're the one to go with buying ours and of course, Bitcoin and looking back at the history of Bitcoin, how it came to be And it was a total farce. They were just nasty. They were driving up the value of Bitcoin on purpose they were, they were buying thousands of them and then selling them and buying them back and forth and losing money to try and drive up the value of this cryptocurrency now a crypto currency. It's kind of like a US dollar bill, for instance, remember it used to be we're on the gold standard and the dollar bill, in fact, all of our currency said that it was redeemable in gold and then they said redeemable in silver. And now they don't claim pie here. They just say that. While it's good for all debts, public and private. Well, people accepted the currency back in the day because they could take it and go to the Treasury and get gold or silver. But then it became just so common, that everybody basically accepted it, you know, and it's fine. It's great. Let's use it and off they go. What's it worth today? What wants $1 bill worth? Well obviously there's been inflation but it's only worth what people will accept it for isn't is not the bottom line it's not worth that piece of paper probably isn't even worth a penny it's made out of scrap cotton is what it's made out of. So it's really not worth very much money. So how then do we value something like the dollar well be we value it because we all agree what it's worth and that that six of those dollars a buy a couple of expense, a couple of moderately expensive coffee, I guess there's coffee that's like 200 bucks a cup But anyways, that's why it's worth what it's worth. So how about a cryptocurrency? All a cryptocurrency is is a number basically. And that number has been quote mind unquote and the way it was mind is it Just had a computer looking for the special type of a number, and it's using massive prime numbers and things already compute them. So it's worth what people say it's worth. And it has been worth as much as I think it hit $20,000 per Bitcoin now, there are many other types of cryptocurrencies but Bitcoin is what you're most likely to know and understand. But there are other types of currencies that are out there right now that are these crypto currencies. And I think Bitcoin last I checked was worth what about $8,000 7000 per Bitcoin? What has driven up the value of Bitcoin dramatically is actually ransomware because that's what people have been using to pay the ransoms and that's part of the beauty of cryptocurrency. This is why I was actually excited about Facebook's Libra currency. Now you know, I don't like Facebook. I don't like Zuckerberg, I don't like all of the allegations surrounding how he cheated the twins out of their money, and then the investments and the things he's done, where he's been lying to Congress and lying to users. And, you know, I don't like the man, bottom line.

However, this type of currency could change the world. If we had a crypto currency that was commonly accepted by governments, and that was backed by large financial institutions. Well, then we really got something. Here's what happened. Facebook announced this Libra cryptocurrency that they were going to come out with, and that was supposedly sometime 2020. And you had PayPal, jump on board, MasterCard, Visa, e Bay, stripe. Mercado, they were all on board. So the idea was, they would set a par value for this Libra cryptocurrency and they would probably offer kind of like an IPO, people would buy this currency, that currency would then be available for people to generally use and, and Facebook would kind of be the Clearinghouse, the bank if you will for these transactions and then the transactions would go through on the back end to these companies I mentioned. So you could go on to eBay, and you could buy things on eBay using your Libra cryptocurrency. Now all of these cryptocurrencies, ultimately our trackable you the secret service has tracked down people. That's how they arrested the guy that was running the whole Silk Road on the dark web using Tor that we talked about last time, right. So cryptocurrencies are not entirely private. In fact, if they wanted them to be they could be entirely tracked.

So Oh, What Why was I so excited was excited because now, I could sell something to someone in Timbuktu in Northern Africa. And I wouldn't have to worry about the currency exchange, I wouldn't have to worry about any of that stuff. I could sell things to people in Europe. I wouldn't have to worry about GMI taking a pound sterling versus a euro versus what? Right? The Russian ruble, what, you know, the Chinese currencies, whatever in the world, I'm just saying, Yeah, it's to Libra. And now those people in those countries that don't have access to a banking system as we do, where I could take a Philippine peso or Mexican peso, or whatever currency I want to I can do that because I have good banks here in the US. But people overseas people in Africa, people in these smaller nations don't have access to it. But if they had access to something like the Libra that was accepted worldwide, that the value of which was well known and well established, then then we could really do something. That's why I was so excited. So this last week, PayPal came out and said, No, we're second fun. No Libra for us, MasterCard then came on said we're not going to be involved with the Libra visa came out after MasterCard and said No way. We have eBay coming out stripe came out. Mercado, all of them came out and said, No, we are not going to accept a Libra. So it's a shame, but that's kind of where it stands right now. On this last Monday, there was a bunch of very non-optimistic news about all of this. A good idea good article on this by the way over naked security. So it doesn't look like it's going to happen. Well, the reason that is not going to happen apparently, is that there's a lot of pushback by a lot of governments because they're worried about regulations being able to track the flow of money, just like in the US where you can have $10,000 or more cash transactions, etc, etc, right? global stable coins and it's absolutely crazy. France has also rejected Libra. The g7 draft report said no, we're not going to do it. The FSB said the same thing over in Russia, the BBC set was reporting the same thing. So now, there is only one firm left that says that they would work with the Libra into Dutch firms called pay you and apparently, the BBC tried Reach out to them. And they hadn't responded as of the time this article was written. So it's a shame. But it looks like Libra is dead. And it's mostly due to governments who were upset that they wouldn't be able to track transactions and way they wanted to that they couldn't tax them. Now we know in the US and some other countries, the tax man is coming after all kinds of virtual stuff. If you own virtual properties in some of these online communities that aren't real, you have to pay taxes on that as well. So no surprise, I guess. Goodbye Libra. We hardly knew the next up. We're going to talk about iOS, jailbreaking and some problems people been running into serious problems. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. And online at Craig Peterson dot com

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

 

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