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Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

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Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#221

Post by camgunz »

rytill wrote: post #196
camgunz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US or EU (etc.) valued their goods and services in BTC, banked in BTC, built monetary and foreign policy around BTC then you would be correct. It is all meaningless, and that's the definition of fiat. What distinguishes one fiat from another is "do important people believe in it". There may come a day when that's true for cryptocurrencies, but that day is not today. Further, I doubt it ever will come, because…

I agree with the argument that it doesn’t make sense for the United States. Other countries using USD already don’t have control over monetary policy.

Oh yeah, totally fair and an interesting difference between Diem and other cryptocurrencies. I still think volatility and transaction latency/costs are an issue, but assuming we fix those (and stipulating they can be fixed) it doesn't seem unwise for smaller countries to use cryptocurrencies. It would more or less be gold standard monetary policy in a box, and while that system has drawbacks, a nice thing about it is it's pretty hard to corrupt. It would be harder (not impossible, but meaningfully harder) to manipulate currency and politically choose winners and losers via monetary policy, which is a big deal especially for growing or newly stable countries.

But for those countries, it really seems like choosing Diem is the worst of both worlds. You're still pinned to the Dollar, you're still at the whim of unaccountable controlling stakeholders, and you have all the downsides of cryptocurrency on top of it. I struggle to think of a group outside of Facebook that Diem is at all good for, honestly.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#222

Post by dboreham »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #220
grey-area wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, I have low-cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers. Basic bank accounts are free, and come with reliable free instant transfers to any other UK bank. That may not be reality in all countries, but it is in many. That's quite a high bar for rival payment methods to clear, but I think the main problem for corporate currencies like this will be rivalry from government issuers. Governments jealously gu…

> In the UK, I have low-cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers. Basic bank accounts are free, and come with reliable free instant transfers to any other UK bank. As an EU citizen living in the UK, it boggles my mind that "EU Faster Payments" was not implemented as part of the eurozone, if not the EU as a whole. As far as I know there's nothing technically preventing this, anyone has an insight into why it i…

>As far as I know there's nothing technically preventing this, anyone has an insight into why it isn't a thing?

Banks wanting to make more money?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#223

Post by fbelzile »

noelsusman wrote: post #151
fastball wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly like the argument that electric cars aren't actually any better because grid electricity is not currently very green in most parts of the world. The response of course being that as the grid gets greener (which it does every year), your car becomes greener also. If you have a gasoline car, it will be just as dirty in 20 years as it is today. Same thing with crypto. Yes, currently a lot of people buy a…

Why would it be good to free currency from government regulation? This is something I often see crypto advocates blow right past as if it's self explanatory, but I don't think it is. I like that the currency I use is managed by my government. Why should I want to switch?

I agree with you, but there are some people around the world that don't trust their governments. A use-case most people here would agree with is in the yellow economic circle in Hong Kong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_economic_circle

Using a cryptocurrency is kind of like a technological band-aid to a political problem. Viewed through the lens as a form of peaceful protest against the government, it makes sense. Otherwise, it's completely your call if you want to make transactions where the receiver has no obligation to provide the product or service you paid for.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#224

Post by camgunz »

lbotos wrote: post #177
rytill wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just a long number with no intrinsic worth. Like money.

Money (at least in the US) is backed by the "full faith of the US Government" for whatever that is worth. https://seekingalpha.com/article/145722-what-really-backs-th... a lot of people like that crypto isn't backed by a gov, but i'd like to believe that most people would agree that the government has some intrinsic worth.

It is literally worth trillions ($27t)! The credit-worthiness of the USD is so good we've sold trillions of them. It's just such an inarguable stat haha.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#226

Post by numair »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #4

Sometimes those names make you wonder. Is it a bad attempt at name squatting? As in diem25? So that all the kids will think of FB currency first, when they hear diem25? Or is it the latin word "diem"? Did they mean to write "dime" and have a typo? And of course in typical FB fashion, the website will be garbage, if you don't allow all their abusive scripts.

This has been downvoted, but I guarantee that people involved with this process would have read Yanis’ work (he’s one of the most famous economic ministers of the early 21st century) and been familiar with the Diem movement. I wonder what Diem25 will do now that they’ve been either trolled or namesquatted by Facebook, depending on how you want to look at it.

Maybe they’re hoping Diem25 will embrace the collision and ride on their platform?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#227

Post by camgunz »

joeseppy wrote: post #190
camgunz wrote: post #121

The core feature of any cryptocurrency is "money w/o state regulation", but when you're talking about selling it for any major currency (Dollars, Euros, Sterling, Yen, RMB) guess what, you're regulated. There is no way around this, regulators are wise (more than wise, hypervigilant) to it. As a result, this stuff is just cumbersome currency that roasts the planet. No thank you.

https://www.upstreamdata.ca/post/natural-gas-venting-how-bit... An eco friendly Cryptocurrency mining use case is that gives electricity generation a baseline price regardless of where it is generated.

Oh that's interesting, like an energy economy.

I think... it's a little tenuous because the price would based on like, math, algorithms and ASICs more than scarcity of fuel (or pollution, or what have you), but definitely an interesting idea.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#228

Post by baumandm »

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…

Facebook Messenger can already transfer money between people. They could just expand that into a fully featured digital wallet to compete with WeChat, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Cash App, PayPal, etc. It's actually astonishing they didn't do this a decade ago.

I get the VC appeal of blockchain, but Facebook already has the money to fund it. Outside tech circles I don't think slapping a blockchain label on a product will make it more appealing.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#229

Post by chillacy »

Traster wrote: post #74

This project seems to be a fantastic advertisement of why large companies can't innovate. Rather than building a product that people can use - even in a very limited setting, Libra has been a series of big announcements followed by enormously expensive negotiations with regulators. How long has this been going on for and how many people are using this? That's not how you innovate.

I suppose it’s easier when you’re smaller and you can just ignore regulations (Uber, Airbnb).

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#230

Post by grenoire »

dboreham wrote: post #222
AsyncAwait wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the UK, I have low-cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers. Basic bank accounts are free, and come with reliable free instant transfers to any other UK bank. As an EU citizen living in the UK, it boggles my mind that "EU Faster Payments" was not implemented as part of the eurozone, if not the EU as a whole. As far as I know there's nothing technically preventing this, anyone has an insight into why it i…

>As far as I know there's nothing technically preventing this, anyone has an insight into why it isn't a thing? Banks wanting to make more money?

Sort of, indirectly. The biggest incentive is not having to invest in the new infrastructure required to comply with the standards.
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