Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra • Hacker News Board

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#271

Post by viraptor » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

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…

> not tied to archaic concepts like sort codes and account numbers

What are the problems with sort codes and account numbers? Are you after binding the account to your identity like Australian PayID?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#272

Post by 1996 » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

meowster wrote: post #116

flixic wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's 3rd in the number of most developers behind Bitcoin and Ethereum.

It's a gameable metric. How do you track it anyway- by github contributors? By number of people submitting patches?

Also, not all contributors are equal...

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#273

Post by atareh » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

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'…

check out my comment on this thread, or this article:

https://www.coindesk.com/billion-dollar-returns-the-upside-o...

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#274

Post by chaostheory » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #210

chaostheory wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying that I feel that it’s a likely event. I’m saying that Facebook thinks it’s one. On a related note, when it seems like Ray Dalio is saying the same thing (the US dollar will be replaced as a reserve currency), there’s more credence to the idea

Why would Facebook care? As a huge multi-national they have billions in all kinds of currencies across different banks. They already are prepared to exchange in any freely traded currencies.

Because it gives people a good reason to use Facebook’s Diem

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#275

Post by gingerlime » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

orf wrote: post #115

tomp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m hearing about mostly instant SEPA payments but I’ve never seen them personally. DBank to DKB takes a few days, DKB to ING, the same, to bunq or N26... First direct in the UK to a EUR account. My limited anecdotal experience is “mostly delayed by at least a day.” am I really an outlier?

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#276

Post by flixic » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

eecks wrote: post #152

another-dave wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or that Nest, Stadia, Waze is Google

Very fair points! I guess it primarily depends on whether the service was developed in-house or acquired. FB is all acquisitions.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#277

Post by Lammy » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

Libra seems increasingly like a regulator-lightning-rod that Facebook never actually intend to be successful but that keeps prying eyes away from other parts of their business.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#278

Post by jMyles » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

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?

> Why would it be good to free currency from government regulation?

Obviously this is a huuuuge question, but it's such a good one.

The simplest compact answer, at least to me (and it may in fact be an oversimplification) goes something like this:

* Nearly invariably (and with a decreasing number of exceptions as technology advances), states which have control over both sides of the economic equation (ie, monetary concerns as well as national finance) find themselves unable to resist devolving into empire, and a specific type of empire called a "welfare-warfare" state, where the money supply is carefully controlled in such a way as to produce just enough support (often through pseudoscientific 'macro-economic' analysis and 'unemployment' prevention) to preclude revolution, while also projecting military power on poorer parts of the world in order to capture resources in a misguided effort to service the never-ending debt that accompanies the fiat money system.

In this view (and to be clear, it's one I hold), states with these powers (a clear conflict of interest, IMO) will continue to plunder the earth and attempt to enslave its people indefinitely, and can only be practically stopped by the economic adjustment that comes from the introduction of a hard currency (which causes the cycle of debt service to become impossibly onerous, even for an empire state).

* For a less oversimplified version, I might recommend Ron Paul's book "End the Fed", which is an introduction to the history of hard-money economics and can be read in a day or two.

* For an even less oversimplified version, you'll need to delve into the "Chicago School" and / or "Austrian School" of economics. Milton Friedman and Ludwig Von Mises are probably the best known scholars of each.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#279

Post by Acrobatic_Road » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

papito wrote: post #48

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?

Blockchain has a zinger name, but it's useless when real-world applications are in play. It is slow and energy inefficient. Considering that it got "reset" by the owners once after a divergence, it's not that "decentralized". It has a group that controls it. Secondly, it's definitely not secure in the sense that is advertised. Aside from regular social engineering and old-school hacks to get people's tokens, governme…

Don't opine about things you don't understand. Its not necessarily slow, energy inefficient or trackable. There are solutions to all if these problems which are available today.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#280

Post by taffer » Sun, Dec 06, 2020, 7:42 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #209

cortesoft wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having some inflation is important, though, to prime the economy for growth. Low level, consistent, inflation is a good thing.

Opinions differ substantially on this point.

This is like saying: "Opinions differ substantially as to whether man-made climate change is real". Yes, opinions differ, but when all mainstream scientists agree that deflation is bad, saying that "opinions differ" is quite misleading.