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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

#261

Post by retube »

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 believe WeChat allows anyone to send and receive money, make payments etc, and at huge stale. No idea how implemented, but no blockchain nonsense.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#262

Post by tomp »

gonehome wrote: post #216
tzs wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". For most of the "banked" in the US, doesn't Zelle cover all that for transfers within the US?

Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, Square, Apple Pay - there are a ton of companies that all do this same thing in the US because the bank software is terrible and expensive. I thought stellar was similar to what the parent comment describes, but it’s also not proof of work (which makes need for blockchain unclear). https://www.stellar.org/

I just checked out Stellar... sounds really interesting actually, very much in line with what I described (except blockchain - I can't see if it's public (not good) or private (not much point in it then) but I'm open to being convinced otherwise), there's just one problem... how do I even use it?? There's no app, no nothing. Ideally, I'd like something like TransferWise "I'd like to send money to X" just non-profit.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#263

Post by raverbashing »

tomp wrote: post #165
pavlov wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

I don't mind the fee per se I just object to obfuscating it (which I term "fraud" thought that might not be the legal definition). NatWest app says £0.00 fee and some FX rate but when I compare with TransferWise, the difference is £250, which means that the "FX rate" implicitly contains the fee. Maybe not "fraud" legally but I don't want to support such non-transparent business practices.

If it's a fixed cost, it's a fee

Yes banks charge commission (where TW usualy has a cost advantage but anyway, it's a money maker for banks and calculation of the fx rate to be used at a given moment is not something simple)

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#264

Post by tomp »

amelius wrote: post #231
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 Yes, this could help us to faster get rid of ads as a monetization model.

I doubt that. The main issue you're trying to solve is, that the current payers of ads, corporations, have much more money available than consumers (the payers of ads in the "microtransactions" concept).

But in any case, that's at most the "next" step. First one is, literally replicate what banks do right now (possibly including minimum transaction fee on small transactions - depends on local banks / regulations) except with non-backwards tech.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#265

Post by bawolff »

summm wrote: post #259
bawolff wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/ )

GNU Taler seems to not let people receiving payments be anonymous, which to me seems like a rather random design choice that has nothing to do with the underlying technology and severely limits Taler.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#266

Post by AsyncAwait »

ByteWelder wrote: post #249
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…

It does exist, but it’s just taking a while for all banks to adopt it. Most/all Dutch banks have adopted it already. https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

That's great, thanks for the pointer.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#267

Post by pavlov »

tzs wrote: post #236
treve wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still absurd that you need additional services just to do transfers. I can't understand why an IBAN-like system can't seem to get off the ground in the US.

Zelle is owned by several major banks, and partnered with many other banks and credit unions. It is incorporated into most of their mobile apps and online banking websites. From a user point of view, it doesn't look like an additional service.

I moved from Europe to US via UK, so I’ve experienced banking systems in Eurozone and GBP.

Zelle doesn’t feel as convenient as regular bank transfers in Europe or UK. Some problems I experienced:

- You have to sign up separately. There’s no guarantee a recipient has enabled it.

- It’s tied to an email address for some reason. (Euro/UK bank transfers just use the regular IBAN.)

- There was a long delay in receiving and sending money when one of the Zelle accounts was new. (My transaction was stuck for at least 24h in a “pending” state.)

- The daily transaction limits are very low. My NYC rent doesn’t fit even in two Zelle payments! (In Europe, the standard limit for an instant SEPA bank transfer is 100k, and it costs nearly nothing.)

For these reasons Zelle feels very unbaked, and doesn’t replace a proper interbank fast payment system like SEPA in Eurozone.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#268

Post by giovannibonetti »

grey-area wrote: post #131
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'…

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. That may not be reality in all countries, but it is in many.

It is also a reality in Brazil. Last month the government and the banks released a standard money transfer protocol (PIX) which superseeds the other protocols (similar to ACH in USA). Cheap, instant payments 24h a day regardless of the bank are a reality here today.

Hence I don't see FB having much success in Brazil with this product.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#269

Post by 1996 »

flixic wrote: post #28
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?

There were some interesting ideas about decentralized management of "treasury" (and issuing/burning of Libra coins), mostly related to the "basket of currencies" model. I think that will stay even with value only being pegged to the US Dollar, but there is less need for that.

> mostly related to the "basket of currencies" model. I think that will stay even with value only being pegged to the US Dollar, but there is less need for that

Indeed, that was their most unique feature.

A stablecoin pegged to a basket of fiat (say just USD, CAD, EUR, GBP, JPY, SGD), using traditional crypto tools (burning, pegging) definitely has a place and a bright future ahead.

However, there's no need for facebook - defi may be able to do that with smart contracts over wrapped stablecoins (say USDC for the USD, etc.)

Hell, even USD, EUR, JPY would still be EXTREMELY valuable and useful.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#270

Post by atareh »

What I haven't seen posted here is this:

- the prospect of large corporations making thousand percent ROI is very real, while the common person using this does not get any of that.

My opinion of this is that we should be concerned - what are the possible upsides of corporations having outsized returns that can't be touched by governments at all (at least with current day laws)

This would only serve to make the wealth gap more extreme.

I urge everyone to read more here: https://www.coindesk.com/billion-dollar-returns-the-upside-o...

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