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Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

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Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#111

Post by davidgerard »

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 key to this is the part of the White Paper that notes they'll need to create a digital identity standard.

This is something that's been widely advocated. But imagine a private company creating one, particularly one with Facebook's track record.

Imagine having to use Facebook to access any money - not just Diem Dollars.

(my book on Facebook's Libra/Diem plan goes into this, particularly ch 8 on privacy)

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#112

Post by davidgerard »

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'…

The answer is: even if any of the above held, Facebook are doing it to:

(1) build a giant sucking data-miner atop all consumer commerce;

(2) print their own money in such quantities that governments can't tell them what to do any more;

(3) establish themselves as providers of the digital identity standard for the world, so that you need to go through Facebook to use money at all.

There are those who have proposed Libra-like basket currencies seriously; Yanis Varoufakis seriously proposed that the Libra 1.0 plan would be a great idea - if done by a public institution such as the IMF, and not by a private company. https://archive.is/YKgQ9

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#113

Post by another-dave »

flixic wrote: post #27
mromanuk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure about that. Whatsapp and Instagram are going in the opposite direction, they added Facebook in the Splash Screen.

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…

Would disagree that it's obvious companies like "Beats by Dre" (Apple) or GitHub/LinkedIn (Microsoft) are subsidiaries from styling/branding

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#114

Post by davidgerard »

netsharc wrote: post #68
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'…

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 plac…

No part of the Libra/Diem plan required or requires a blockchain.

The reason for the blockchain: Libra was founded by four bitcoiners (Morgan Beller, David Marcus, Kevin Weil, Christian Catalini) who wanted something like bitcoin, but not volatile, and run by sensible people, i.e. them.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#115

Post by orf »

tomp wrote: post #102
user-the-name wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 10kEU…

That's from UK to SEPA, which has a delay. SEPA transfers themselves are mostly instant since about 2018.

There's sometimes a nominal fee across countries (mandated to be "no more than a local transfer"), but in many cases they are free.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#116

Post by meowster »

flixic wrote: post #103
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.

There are decentralized crypto currencies that have sub 1 cent fees - where the fee even gets smaller as the blocksize automatically adjusts larger to accommodate more transactions.

Edit: Monero. It's currently 15th on Coin Gecko by market cap at $2.3 billion. It's 3rd in the number of most developers behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#118

Post by pavlov »

tomp wrote: post #102
user-the-name wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 10kEU…

The 250 GBP must be the exchange fee? If your account is in GBP and the destination is in EUR, the bank gets to charge you for the exchange. 2.5% is a typical rate. That's unfortunate, but is unrelated to the cost of transfer.

Euro transfers have become instant and 24/7 thanks to the SEPA Instant Credit architecture:

https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

You can transfer up to 100k EUR in less than ten seconds; works overnight and during weekends and holidays.

In the UK, at least Revolut supports this already:

https://blog.revolut.com/sepa-instant-euro-transfers-now-ava...

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#119

Post by davidgerard »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #88

Interesting. They went from "Libra" (implying Freedom) to "Diem" (which sounds a lot like Die or Dying).

Their press release for the name change even called it "a new day for the project" - a Novi Diem, if you will. https://www.diem.com/en-us/updates/diem-association/

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#120

Post by hannasanarion »

splintercell wrote: post #86
joosters wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there ever any benefit to using a blockchain - other than marketing BS, of course? It was always Facebook (or their chosen partners) who controlled the coin, so the blockchain was pointless - there never was any decentralized trust, as I understand it?

Completely different property rights enforcement (programmable and decentralized). Sure a theft may still have to be resolved via the courts, but it significantly reduces many overheads.

Thefts on the blockchain can't be resovled by the courts, that's the entire point. Billions of dollars worth of bitcoin, eth, and other coins have already been stolen through hacks of exchanges, fraudulent exchanges, and buggy smart contracts, and none of it can ever be returned because the transaction history is immutable and new transactions require digital signatures.
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