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Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

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Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#381

Post by smt88 »

whb07 wrote: post #344
smt88 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what makes you think the US would have no control over the value of any popular crypto. If it's being spent in the US, they have control. They can make it illegal, tax it to hell, or just start mining it themselves.

I don’t think you understand it then... Let me know if they ever did stop music and video sharing, did RIAA lawsuits work? How’s that cute FBI logo at the start of movies working out?

Money is not digital entertainment. That analogy makes zero sense and doesn't make your point at all.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#382

Post by [deleted] »

wlesieutre wrote: post #312
wpietri wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a reason this is tied to the blockchain? The only legitimate reason I can think of would be cynically drafting on the hype cycle. But I've been reading David Gerard's book Libra Shrugged [1] and it looks like the actual answer is that "blockchain" has a quasi-religious belief system built up around it, and the people involved are members of the faith. One of the stunning things for me about "blockchain" re…

Could just be thanks to technology office politicking. Some senior engineer or manager says "I want to work on blockchain projects", invents a reason to do that within Facebook, or maybe their boss really wants to keep them there, and somehow they get enough buy-in to create Libra. Now they have a blockchain project. This seems more likely to me than someone at Facebook saying "We need a our own money system," evalua…

[deleted]

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#383

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

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 just can't use Ethereum for this with a little more polishing on the UI end from the devs. It has the added benefit of being decentralized, something Facebook or any other company or charity will never be. It even recently implemented proof of stake rollout so it isn't using massive environmental resources for proof of work in the future.

Of course Bitcoin was ideal for this but it went off the rails for the banking the unbanked dream when it refused to scale from a blistering 7 transactions per second and the associated high fees. Ethereum fees aren't great either, but my understanding is that massive increases in throughput are coming with sharding etc. in Ethereum 2.0. Monero would be perfect for this, but I don't know if the world is ready for true privacy and fungibility in their e-coin.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-btc-eth...

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#384

Post by logicchains »

numpad0 wrote: post #237
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.

Fucking true. Zero inflation for couple decades? Absolutely destroys a nation.

Fucking false, stop spreading misinformation. The US experienced continued deflation from ~1870 to ~1890 and still saw a growth rate of around 4%.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#385

Post by fastball »

cortesoft wrote: post #188
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…

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

Inflation is good for an economy (assuming it's growing). It's not good for an individual.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#386

Post by _fqqr »

emteycz wrote: post #317
giovannibonetti wrote: post #268

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. 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). Che…

What about sending money out of Brazil, and non-permanent residents of Brazil?

Any person with a CPF, our individual taxpayer registry identification, can use PIX. Non-permanent residents of Brazil are included in this category.

As for international transfers, the Central Bank is looking at simplifying existing regulations in order to allow international transfers as late as 2023

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#387

Post by cortesoft »

logicchains wrote: post #384
numpad0 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fucking true. Zero inflation for couple decades? Absolutely destroys a nation.

Fucking false, stop spreading misinformation. The US experienced continued deflation from ~1870 to ~1890 and still saw a growth rate of around 4%.

So first, you of course picked one of the very few deflationary growth periods in history.

Second, that deflationary period was caused by a huge increase in productivity... it is known as "the second industrial revolution", and global production efficiency took off during that period.

Third, the fact that there was only 4% actually shows that growth was artificially constrained by a limited money supply; productive efficiency increased so much, we should have had better growth than we did. We would have, if we were able to grow the money supply with the economy.

In fact, the only thing that kept the money supply from completely stopping economic growth is that there actually WAS a huge increase in the money supply caused by massive gold and silver mining.

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#388

Post by camgunz »

colordrops wrote: post #256
camgunz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're trying to make a semantic argument and say that cryptocurrencies aren't regulated until you sell them for other currencies that are. My counterargument--where admittedly I skipped some steps and didn't explain very well--is that that turns cryptocurrencies into a commodity, not a currency, and that cryptocurrencies are particularly valueless commodities.

FWIW, you're saying that while cryptocurrency stays on the blockchain it's not regulated. That's definitely not true in the US--people have gone to jail for not complying with financial regulation and reporting laws [1]--and is likely soon to be even less true [2].

[1]: https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

[2]: https://news.bitcoin.com/cryptocurrency-act-of-2020/

Re: Diem – A rebrand of Facebook’s Libra

#390

Post by Staurt101 »

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?

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