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Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

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Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#101

Post by eloff »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #100
eloff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how finance works. If you don't follow the rules, you get cut off from the rest of the ecosystem which is tightly controlled by the US. So if diem wants to operate at all, they must adhere to the rules regardless of which countries they are operating in.

This is meant to be a completely different ecosystem, no? An ecosystem not controlled with the US. This isn't a normal financal service, it's not banking, it's outside of banking hence why it's aimed and people without banks. And other companies are already in this space providing basically the same service. It seems to me, people applying how companies 1st world countries + the US operate to how companies in 3rd wor…

That might be workable only if you specifically don't interface with the outside financial world.

If for example you require a third party exchange to sell to fiat currency, that should work.

But that exchange has to do the KYC stuff and the unbanked are still cut out.

Now if it's a local exchange for a local currency, not USD then is fine.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#102

Post by tomp »

user-the-name wrote: post #82
tomp wrote: 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'…

> low-cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers - clearly something missing right now in this world Missing in the US . At least Europe has had those for a long time already, using normal banks.

I'm not sure I agree. First of all, it's not "Europe" but rather "Euro-accounts" (so no cross-currency transfers). Also not that fast - don't work overnight, on the weekends, payments might take a day to arrive.

I just checked - paying 10EUR from my UK account to the EUR area takes 2-4 days (I'd need to pay 15GBP for an "urgent" next-business-day transfer) (same rate as TransferWise) whereas if I want to send 10kEUR I'd pay 250 GBP (!) for a "no-fee" (!!) transfer than with TransferWise (a.k.a. scam). Paying from EUR to EUR account (cross-border) costs about 0.1% (0.38 EUR fee to send 350EUR) which isn't too bad.

Suffice to say, room for improvement.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#103

Post by flixic »

x87678r wrote: post #31

Are any crypto currencies widely used for transactions these days? ie the classic coffee shop purchase. BTC had a start but now seems only useful for people buying as an asset.

Today's Bitcoin's average transaction fee is $6.34. For "coffee shop purchases" that is horrendous. Ethereum is better, at $1.43, but still not usable for coffee. Only highly-centralized cryptocurrencies, such as Stellar, have reasonable transaction fees.

I think for the time being it's meaningful to think of cryptocurrency transactions as stock purchases / fees to the stock exchange.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#104

Post by chrisco255 »

x87678r wrote: post #31

Are any crypto currencies widely used for transactions these days? ie the classic coffee shop purchase. BTC had a start but now seems only useful for people buying as an asset.

Right now crypto is being mainly used for decentralized finance involving larger transactions for lending and savings with actual yield. See https://defipulse.com for some of the largest dapps in the space (has grown to have $14 billion in assets in less than one year).

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#106

Post by flixic »

pferde wrote: post #90
flixic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "unified" splash screen is menacing. A constant reminder that wherever you turn, it's a FB property. With Google/Apple/Microsoft it's quite straightforward, everything they make is clearly their style, their brand. This is not the case with Facebook's properties, they don't have a unified design language or branding. So adding a unified splash is a step in "marking it's territory", I just hate the feeling of tha…

So, are you basically saying that you feel uncomfortable having the ugly, naked truth made more obvious to you?

I think so, yes. It felt better to see Instagram at least visually untouched by the blue "f".

Although, that splash has helped me reduce my usage of FB apps, so maybe that's a positive.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#107

Post by stu2b50 »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #100
eloff wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how finance works. If you don't follow the rules, you get cut off from the rest of the ecosystem which is tightly controlled by the US. So if diem wants to operate at all, they must adhere to the rules regardless of which countries they are operating in.

This is meant to be a completely different ecosystem, no? An ecosystem not controlled with the US. This isn't a normal financal service, it's not banking, it's outside of banking hence why it's aimed and people without banks. And other companies are already in this space providing basically the same service. It seems to me, people applying how companies 1st world countries + the US operate to how companies in 3rd wor…

If you don't play by the US's rules you can't withdraw in USD.

Which is the only fiat currency Diem supports conversion into right now.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#108

Post by flixic »

rishabhd wrote: post #81

Just did a search on site for "facebook" (ignored community forums), all the results are very carefully worded and scrubbed as of now.

Same was true for Libra as well. The only place you would find "Facebook" was FAQs (to say that it is NOT a FB product, fully independent, nothing to see here) and whitepapers (that explained FB role in more detail, but not more honesty).

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#109

Post by hobofan »

lukeschlather wrote: post #85
hobofan wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

The standard definition of "blockchain" presumes that there is zero-trust between nodes and that anyone on the Internet can join the network. These properties are probably not what you want for most practical applications. For most practical applications a git repo where you have some set of trusted notaries and at least M of N notaries must sign each commit is probably closer to what you want. (Or something that is…

I also prefer zero-trust blockchains, as they are more interesting ideologically and intellectually. I disagree however that the "standard" definition presumes zero-trust. In my opinion the only thing that is presumed is some form of consensus mechanism, which can also be a trusted one like PoA (proof of authority).

> git repo where you have some set of trusted notaries and at least M of N notaries

There isn't really much difference between a PoA blockchain and what you describe on a data structure level. The main differences here will be the mode of operation (active node vs. passive repository) and builtin support and optimizations for currency transactions.

If you were really inclined, you could probably implement a optimized git client/server that could achieve that (and I wouldn't be surprised if someone has done that already). What's the point in doing so tough, if you could just as well use an existing implementation of a PoA blockchain?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#110

Post by yorwba »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #57
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #43

The whole “unbanked” thing is really unconvincing, because there's no way Libra/Diem will be usable for people who don't have identity documents and the evidence needed for KYC/AML forms, and that excludes most unbanked people. As for international money transfers: TransferWise and the like are already providing better solutions in that space without forcing you to use Facebook Coins. Now you might say that mostly ca…

> The whole “unbanked” thing is really unconvincing, because there's no way Libra/Diem will be usable for people who don't have identity documents and the evidence needed for KYC/AML forms, and that excludes most unbanked people. Who says the countries this will be used in have KYC/AML? The unbanked people this would be for aren't in countries that have those laws. > As for international money transfers: TransferWise…

> Who says the countries this will be used in have KYC/AML? The unbanked people this would be for aren't in countries that have those laws.

You mean like Somalia? Even Somalia has KYC/AML laws: https://frc.gov.so/aml-cft-law/ (Customer due diligence is Art. 5)

Are there any countries that don't have similar laws?

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