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Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

diem.com

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Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#62
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Blockchain" in some sense can also be seen as a programming framework where you have a common set of functionality that people know how to work with and can gain a transferable skill set with. Similar to how MVC knowledge is to some degree transferable between Rails and Django. So in that regard I wouldn't immediately dismiss a usage of a blockchain as pointless. Given that PoA chains are usually pretty efficient, t…

We normally call that an 'API', no chains of blocks required!

An API would only be the _interface_, which just like with MVC isn't the same between a lot of different implementations of the same model and doesn't cover additional assumptions, like e.g. having a chain of blocks with a consensus mechanism to decide which chain of blocks to prefer over a diverging chain of blocks.

If you want to argue for an alternative to a chain of blocks you could of course do that, but in my personal experience if you consider all the requirements (multi-party, auditable, etc.) the usual argument of "you could just use a normal centralized database" falls apart and you end up with something that in some form or another resembles a blockchain (or something equally complex), so why not use a blockchain?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#63

I don't think an interesting cryptocurrency will ever come out of the US , they have the dollar.

Maybe Facebook sees that the US dollar will no longer be the reserve currency one day relatively soon?

Wouldn't bet on it. People said the Yen was going to displace USD, then they said that about the Euro...

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#65

I don't think an interesting cryptocurrency will ever come out of the US , they have the dollar.

There are some within that realize the U.S is in an unsustainable path of devaluing, borrowing, and excess spending in pursuit of failed policies. There is still hope!

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#66

I don't think an interesting cryptocurrency will ever come out of the US , they have the dollar.

Technically, avalanche is a US coin. It was also the first proof of stake crypto currency but I have not seen it picking up much traction in the US. https://www.avalabs.org

*EDIT Avalanche was not the first proof of state crypto currency.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#67
Digital value transfer is a oligopoly of a few US companies that can effectively exclude anyone in the world from the digital economy in general, any innovation and any competition by anyone at all is a very good thing. It's too bad that fb listened to the US politics and made their project much worse, but its still very good in terms of cyrpto adoption by the non-technical people which can in turn make way for other, better projects.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#68
post #56

Ok, so let's focus on the underlying idea, without the "Facebook is trying to rebrand their evil brand" cruft. Basically, I think the underlying idea is valuable - low-cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers - clearly something missing right now in this world, even for the "global rich" (citizens of first-world countries), let alone for the "unbanked". It could even scale even more to a money store but that'…

I think Zuck's mission wasn't really about empowering the unbanked, but it's: fight WeChat. WeChat already has an effective digital payment system, with the tasty tasty analytics and surveillance capabilities (which yeah, Zuck also probably wants).

As to blockchains, that's because this is the hype of the last few years, is it not?

As to currencies, IMO the vision of the people hyping bitcoin was that your pizza place would accept BTC (and not after converting their USD price to BTC) because their supplies would be happy to do as well. A single currency for the world would be interesting, but as economists have pointed out, devaluing your currency is a way to escape economic crises, but e.g. Euro countries can't do this any more, hence the problems the PIIGS countries had.

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