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Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

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Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#251

Post by samatman »

judge2020 wrote: post #238
samatman wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2% annual debasement rate of modern state currencies would have been a massive crisis in the era of metals. Imagine a king putting 2% less silver in the coin, year over year. We're just used to it. But leave that aside, you said you like government-managed currency and I believe you. Venezuelans don't. The way I see it, what's stopping the EUR and USD from going down that spiral is momentum, rather than some law…

> Imagine a king putting 2% less silver in the coin, year over year. This happened fairly often, and it's called debasement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debasement https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/MONEYLEC.htm

A word I specifically used, yes.

A fun quote from the Wikipedia page:

> If done too frequently, debasement may lead to a new coin being adopted as a standard currency

Indeed a risk!

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#252

Post by skinkestek »

davidgerard wrote: post #208
randall wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2) I don't believe so. 3) The hope is you don't have to use an intermediary coin.

They have declared that they will not access the data. However, Facebook makes extensive use of shadow profiles of people who aren't even Facebook customers. They could certainly add Diem blockchain data to those, as they will have access to said blockchain via Novi, their Diem wallet. David Marcus and Mark Zuckerberg have both stated that data from Novi will not go to the Facebook advertising engine. However, Zucker…

> Because everything they do is to collect personal information.

Are you really really sure that some of the things Facebook (and Google) does aren't done just to spite us ;-)?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#253

Post by FpUser »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #201
fastball wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the biggest one is concern over things like hyperinflation, which has happened in the real-world many times. Or, not quite at hyperinflation, but your government is enacting policies based on MMT or similar and you are worried that this could hurt you (as a holder of the currency) in the long-run. Or, maybe you're worried about governments being able to dictate what you are allowed to purchase with "their"…

I'm not a finance expert, but I don't think those issues are caused by the kind of money used. People make mistakes, some of them are greedy, powerful people want to keep their power, etc.. You can't fix people with a currency. And humans are creative, if you switch over to crypto, they'll find a new way of doing the same old things.. My government not wanting me to send money somewhere: Well, this might be a clichè,…

>"...My government not wanting me to send money somewhere: Well, this might be a clichè, but apart from slightly limiting my freedom this prevents bad guys doing nasty stuff aswell..."

Bad guys get around it one or the other way. You do not.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#254

Post by eitland »

baumandm wrote: post #228
netsharc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Outside tech circles I don't think slapping a blockchain label on a product will make it more appealing.

I kind of hope the word "blockchain" should soon make it less appealing especially in tech circles.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#255

Post by tsimionescu »

dmantis wrote: post #239
camgunz wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't always agree w/ my government here in the US, but I do like that--while it's not a perfect process--as a democracy I can influence it. The reason it's illegal to buy certain things in the US (people, organs, drugs, assassinations) is that we all got together and thought people shouldn't do that. Many people disagree but, that's what voting is for. Subverting the will of a democratic people is... immoral? The…

You assume that government is good and prohibited uses are bad. But your gov banned wikileaks bank accounts in the past and that is the perfect example of the case when the gov is definitely is a malicious actor (while their behaviour perfectly rational from their side of things). Govs do war crimes, mass espionage and human rights violations. That should be addressed as well.

Yes, but it should be addressed democratically - protests, lobbying your representatives, even voting. Inventing a new currency that is, for a little while, hard to track by the government isn't a real solution, it's just pretending the problem doesn't exist.

The government is persecuting WikiLeaks financially because that is easy to do. Even if a cryptocurrency were to take off as a currency and still be untraceable, the government would just move on to some other form of persecution. The real problem to be addressed is the persecution of a useful legitimate organization by an ostensibly democratic government. The form that persecution takes is secondary.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#256

Post by colordrops »

camgunz wrote: post #147
colordrops wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is there still so much of ignorance over cryptocurrency this far along after its inception? Just because you buy and sell gold with major currencies doesn't mean gold is regulated. Crypto isn't much different. If you can get it anonymously, you can move it anywhere you want as long as you stay on the blockchain. Once you leave the blockchain, you aren't dealing with crypto anymore. Once you sell gold you aren't d…

You're talking about a commodity, not a currency. No one walks around with gold nuggets (or jugs of milk, or bales of wheat) in their pocket because our economy doesn't use the barter system. The difference between cryptocurrencies and other commodities is that other commodities have intrinsic worth. You can drink milk, you can eat wheat. You can't do anything with cryptocurrency, it's just a long, meaningless number…

You changed the subject completely. What does your comment have to do with it being regulated or not?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#257

Post by colordrops »

waihtis wrote: post #133
colordrops wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is there still so much of ignorance over cryptocurrency this far along after its inception? Just because you buy and sell gold with major currencies doesn't mean gold is regulated. Crypto isn't much different. If you can get it anonymously, you can move it anywhere you want as long as you stay on the blockchain. Once you leave the blockchain, you aren't dealing with crypto anymore. Once you sell gold you aren't d…

Gold and crypto are hardly comparable. Start by factoring in all the crime & scams being done via crypto and you've got a general public practically begging for government intervention for cryptocurrencies.

Ok, but that doesn't alter my point.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#258

Post by vmception »

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?

governments or their people try to tie prosperity and access to morality, in arbitrary ways outside of their constitutional framework in arbitrary conditions that change over time, and are different across borders

having an optional liquid payment system outside of their control solves that

and the existence of that optional liquid payment system has the possibility of making their controlled one redundant

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#259

Post by summm »

bawolff wrote: post #250
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 don't understand why people don't revisit DigiCash ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash ) for this kind of usecase. It seems like a really good fit for this type of usecase where you are giving up on the proof-of-work aspect of bitcoin, but want all the other cool properties of cryptocurrency, and has better anonymity properties.

They do. It's called Taler ( https://taler.net/ )

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#260

Post by tsimionescu »

icebraining wrote: post #248
toomuchtodo wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence why crypto can't be taken seriously as a currency. Imagine explaining to a non tech family member or friend why their dollars have zero value now because they’re on the wrong chain.

That's not how forks work.

If they had sold some items for Eth just before the fork, they will never recover the Eth, and they may be unable to recover the items either. So yes, in a fork people lose money.
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