> without also impacting a lot of other companies and people doing similar things because the law should apply equally to all.
Other blockchains have not been blocked outright because they don't pose a threat and are developing slowly, so EU countries are working towards more or less sensible regulations. Facebook has far more power to drive adoption, so in order to avoid a situation where Facebook screws up (intentionally or unintentionally) they block the currency preemptively.
> quite a lot of EU citizens own and actively trade in bitcoin, eth, and a wide variety of other coins already
Relatively, not that many. Also, those currencies are being mostly used as investments, not currency.
> Why would a Libra coin be any different just because Facebook is behind it?
Precisely because Facebook is behind it: a foreign company, known to bypass and ignore regulations, with interests that do not necessarily align with those of the citizens, and with zero accountability.
> startups doing things with block chains and smart contract.
As long as it is not a global currency owned by private corporations it's ok.
> This would make it more similar to what e.g. Apple Pay and Android Pay enable
A different coin is very different from Apple and Android Pay. Payment systems are very different from coins.
Maybe but I'm just making the point that Facebook has plenty of ways to use most or all of what they announced regarding Libra to basically meet their stated goal of providing a wallet feature to users that would basically amount to them doing very similar/identical things as other companies already do and would be quite hard to ban for that same reason. The reason I bring up payment solutions is because that is literally the primary usecase for Libra. A wallet type feature with some sort of blockchain based euro or dollar tokens should be completely fine under existing laws. Several companies do that already in the EU.
France and Germany are being quite vague about what exactly they will block, what the scope is of that, or even how they imagine this would work. Also, Facebook itself has not been very clear about their actual intentions or those of the Libra legal entity that is supposedly governing all of this. Depending on how you read their announcements, Libra the coin might be considered as an experimental/optional part of an overall solution or vision that could also involve euro/dollar tokens (just like others trade on Stellar, Ripple, etc.).
Of course FB has ways to use most of what they announced with Libra and most of that would be fine. The problem with Libra is its core, the fact that it's an alternative currency backed by a company that can reach almost everybody. Other companies develop other coins but they do not have the influence FB has and so it gives legislators time to regulate it.
Sovereign monetary policy goes out the window if Libra takes a serious hold in society. The only solution to that is a decisive ban on it.
This sounds suspiciously like the “we are too smart for you to regulate us” argument.
When reading a lot of these arguments, a lot of them seem to me to be very “white box” defending the end result against legislation by arguing about the internal implementation.
Facebook is creating a financial instrument. I’m a bit surprised regulators couldn’t use _existing_ legislation to prevent them from using it in a country.
Facebook is creating a technical platform very similar to other platforms already in use that enables many things; most of which are neither new nor illegal.
The financial instrument part of it is getting all the attention here even though it's hardly essential to Libra (the platform as a whole). That too is not new and they'd have to apply existing legislation in a way that is consistent with how they are already applying it.
That's the key point. Failing to do that would create a lot of problems; which automatically translates into court cases and judges deciding on what is the correct way to do this rather than politicians. That will take many years. Existing legislation is the only legislation that matters because creating new laws or emergency laws would be very hard; especially considering that nobody seems to agree on what should actually be in those laws.
So we're getting a vague "we don't like that sort of thing" in response to a deliberately vague press release a few months ago that wasn't being very specific on a lot of things. It's a political statement not actually backed up by concrete plans to change legislation or instruct authorities to interpret it in a certain way. It's a hollow threat.
Of course you have to see this in the context of the bigger picture of tax dodging and privacy violations associated with big US tech companies operating in Europe and the public pressure to do something about that. That's what this is. Political posturing.
Other blockchains have not been blocked outright because they don't pose a threat and are developing slowly, so EU countries are working towards more or less sensible regulations. Facebook has far more power to drive adoption, so in order to avoid a situation where Facebook screws up (intentionally or unintentionally) they block the currency preemptively.
> quite a lot of EU citizens own and actively trade in bitcoin, eth, and a wide variety of other coins already
Relatively, not that many. Also, those currencies are being mostly used as investments, not currency.
> Why would a Libra coin be any different just because Facebook is behind it?
Precisely because Facebook is behind it: a foreign company, known to bypass and ignore regulations, with interests that do not necessarily align with those of the citizens, and with zero accountability.
> startups doing things with block chains and smart contract.
As long as it is not a global currency owned by private corporations it's ok.
> This would make it more similar to what e.g. Apple Pay and Android Pay enable
A different coin is very different from Apple and Android Pay. Payment systems are very different from coins.