[HN Gopher] Diem - A rebrand of Facebook's Libra
___________________________________________________________________
Diem - A rebrand of Facebook's Libra
Author : obilgic
Score : 192 points
Date : 2020-12-06 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.diem.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.diem.com)
| tomp wrote:
| 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 's basically being a bank, which is related but somewhat
| orthogonal (e.g. both Revolut and TransferWise started as mostly
| money-sending services and are now moving towards the "bank"
| stage).
|
| So, my thoughts / questions are the following:
|
| 1) Is there a reason this is tied to the blockchain? For most
| purposes, blockchain without proof of work is just a glorified
| git repository, and I'm pretty sure that not even the most law-
| abiding citizens want all their transactions to be public.
|
| 2) Is there a reason this would be tied to a company, instead of
| being run by e.g. a charity? I understand why Facebook / Apple
| might be more successful with launching this than e.g.
| TransferWise (they can utilize their platform to push this (or
| any other) idea to a massive userbase), but really there's no
| underlying reason why you'd want this to be run by a non-
| financial company (and an ad ("use people's data to manipulate
| them") company) and many reasons why you _wouldn 't_ want to
| comingle your financial data with the likes of Facebook / Google
| / Apple.
|
| 3) Why a "new currency" ("stablecoin")? I understand that it
| might have some desirable properties but I'm pretty sure that
| most people would be negatively surprised if their "stable" coins
| started losing value (in terms of their local currency). Also,
| I'd say that most people don't even care/think about "FX rates"
| etc. and those that do are mainly currency traders /
| "speculators". So I envision the "ideal" system to be basically
| just an app displaying "sending 100EUR to person A in country Z
| will cost you 0.3% and the payment will arrive in 20 minutes" and
| the other person seeing "person B sent you 8919 INR".
|
| 4) I'm sure there are many issues with fraud/reversible
| transactions/KYC/anti-terrorism/anti-money-laundering that would
| need to be resolved somehow.
|
| I think this is an ideal case scenario for a charity - an almost-
| government (non-profit, "for the people") organisation handling
| an area of "social tech" that global governments aren't tackling
| (because they aren't incentivized to) but fundamentally all the
| pieces of technology are there.
|
| If anyone is interested in funding / founding such an
| organization, let me know.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > For most purposes, blockchain without proof of work is just a
| glorified git repository
|
| Could you expand on that?
|
| > and I'm pretty sure that not even the most law-abiding
| citizens want all their transactions to be public.
|
| I believe some blockchain provide anonymous transactions (based
| on zero-knowledge proofs for instance).
| amelius wrote:
| > low-cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers
|
| Yes, this could help us to faster get rid of ads as a
| monetization model.
| tomp wrote:
| 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.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| If Facebook thought that a global payments network was
| going to make them more money than advertising, then they
| would have invested in this ten years ago, and we would now
| all be heartily sick of FBcoin and all the unexpected
| consequences it engendered.
| wpietri wrote:
| > 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"
| revolutionary hype is how long it has gone on without
| significant accomplishment. It started only a bit after the
| iPhone, which has had a huge impact on things, including
| payments. It's hard now to imagine a world without the internet
| in one's pocket. But if every blockchain stopped working
| tomorrow, few would notice. Contrast this with M-Pesa [2], a
| different approach to digital money. It started at around the
| same time but has had huge uptake. A recent report in Kenya [3]
| says M-Pesa has 30 million accounts, which is approximately the
| number of people in Kenya age 15 or over. To me, that's what
| successful digital money looks like.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08M8DGKY4/ [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa [3] https://ca.go.ke/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/07/Sector-Statistic...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 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," evaluating blockchain
| against a centralized design, and deciding for technical
| reasons that Facebook Money should be a blockchain project.
| tzs wrote:
| > 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?
| treve wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| 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.
| pavlov wrote:
| 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.
| fossuser wrote:
| 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/
| djrogers wrote:
| > 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.
|
| For all intents and purposes, Zelle _is_ the bank software,
| and it's free. Zelle is backed by a bunch of banks - the
| majority of US checking accounts have access to use it at
| no cost.
| tomp wrote:
| 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.
| clashmeifyoucan wrote:
| fwiw, Stellar integrates directly with Keybase.1 I
| remember they did an airdrop when they launched and
| deposited ~100$ worth of XLM into every Keybase users'
| wallet.
|
| Not sure how interesting Keybase is now, but it does
| allow sending money to other Keybase users directly
| through chat.2
|
| [1] https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar-launch
|
| [2] https://book.keybase.io/wallet#chat
| pcurve wrote:
| I like your thoughtful breakdown. Thanks for that.
|
| The video shots of small merchants and everyday people, with
| voiceover "what if everyone is invited to global economy" was
| bothersome to watch. I don't like their underlying
| characterization that the lack of frictionless banking and
| payment systems are what's holding back Africa and poorer parts
| of the world. It's just not true.
| atareh wrote:
| check out my comment on this thread, or this article:
|
| https://www.coindesk.com/billion-dollar-returns-the-upside-o...
| netsharc wrote:
| 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 place would accept BTC (and not after
| converting their USD price to BTC) because their supplies would
| be happy to do as well. A single currency for the world would
| be interesting, but as economists have pointed out, devaluing
| your currency is a way to escape economic crises, but e.g. Euro
| countries can't do this any more, hence the problems the PIIGS
| countries had.
| davidgerard wrote:
| No part of the Libra/Diem plan required or requires a
| blockchain.
|
| The reason for the blockchain: Libra was founded by four
| bitcoiners (Morgan Beller, David Marcus, Kevin Weil,
| Christian Catalini) who wanted something like bitcoin, but
| not volatile, and run by _sensible_ people, i.e. them.
| xorcist wrote:
| Blockchain or not blockchain is perhaps the least interesting
| part of all the so called "blockchain" projects.
|
| It's a term without an accepted definition. A lot of useless
| branding is expected. Just you wait until IBM gets their
| hands on .. oh, they already did.
|
| Both the Bitcoin-like zero trust ledger and the m-of-n
| trusted notaries model have useful use cases. While more
| descriptive terms would have been great, arguing definitions
| only goes so far.
| baumandm wrote:
| 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.
| eitland wrote:
| > 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.
| user-the-name wrote:
| > low-cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers -
| clearly something missing right now in this world
|
| Missing _in the US_.
|
| At least Europe has had those for a long time already, using
| normal banks.
| tomp wrote:
| 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 10kEUR I'd pay 250 GBP (!) for a
| "no-fee" (!!) transfer than with TransferWise (a.k.a. _scam_
| ). Paying from EUR to EUR account (cross-border) costs about
| 0.1% (0.38 EUR fee to send 350EUR) which isn't too bad.
|
| Suffice to say, room for improvement.
| pavlov wrote:
| 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 less than ten seconds;
| works overnight and during weekends and holidays.
|
| In the UK, at least Revolut supports this already:
|
| https://blog.revolut.com/sepa-instant-euro-transfers-now-
| ava...
| tomp wrote:
| 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 _PS0.00 fee_ and _some_ FX rate but when
| I compare with TransferWise, the difference is PS250,
| 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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| 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)
| jeltz wrote:
| Maybe it is typical with 2.5% in the UK but here in
| Sweden the typical is 0.5% so I feel like you are being
| robbed.
| riffraff wrote:
| TransferWise also supports instant SEPA payments. The
| first time I transferred money to my bank in a different
| country and I received immediate confirmation I was
| mindblown.
| spurgu wrote:
| My Revolut account is moving to Lithuania though. Are UK
| customers keeping their UK ones?
|
| From experience with bank accounts from 4 different
| European countries those instant transfers definitely
| don't work everywhere and are often accompanied by an
| extra fee.
|
| Edit: And this is 2020. I highly welcome some innovation
| in this field - five years ago..
| jeltz wrote:
| I think that is mainly UK banks bring bad. Here in Sweden
| which is also not a euro country the exchange fee is
| roughly 0.5% at my bank and they charge 3 euro for non-SEPA
| transactions and 0.15 EUR for SEPA transactions. So I would
| need to pay 50 EUR to transfer 10k EUR from my SEK account
| and just 0.15 EUR to transfer from my EUR account.
| err4nt wrote:
| Here in Canada we have e-transfers securely from bank
| account to bank account, in minutes/hours.
| orf wrote:
| 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.
| gingerlime wrote:
| 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?
| grey-area wrote:
| 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
| guard the right to issue currency, as they rightly perceive it
| as one of their biggest holds over citizens. Any sufficiently
| powerful currency would attract their scrutiny.
|
| I do think payments are ripe for disruption though - when money
| is sent over a free global network between pre-vetted partners
| (i.e. bank customers) there is no reason the transaction fees
| should be high, even internationally. I'm not clear how a
| blockchain based currency is going to help facilitate that, but
| would love to see a revolution in payments which made them
| simpler and not tied to archaic concepts like sort codes and
| account numbers, and reduced the fees charged to customers and
| merchants for payment networks or card issuers which don't do
| the hard KYC work (banks and payment processors do that).
|
| The problems here are in verified identity tied to real people,
| not how to perform transactions quickly, or things like
| anonymous trust-free transactions which nobody actually wants.
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| > 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.
| emteycz wrote:
| What about sending money out of Brazil, and non-permanent
| residents of Brazil?
| viraptor wrote:
| > 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?
| andylynch wrote:
| Odd thing given the UK context - the major banks and many
| smaller let you pay someone with just their mobile number
| (it's called PayM). Although given its bank payments,
| account numbers are far from archaic, and new things like
| confirmation payee help make the whole system more secure.
| Now it you want to talk about archaic, how about MT103 and
| friends?
| TuringNYC wrote:
| even in the countries where you do have this, what about
| cross-border transactions...those usually again become messy.
| Even between two countries which each have a good internal
| system as you describe.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| > 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 isn't a thing?
| riffraff wrote:
| I regularly transfer money between three European countries
| with instant payments, it works just fine but not all banks
| have implemented it.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Cybersecurity/trust issues? Can't imagine a region wide
| inter bank network to be more technologically better
| protected than even Gmail.
| ByteWelder wrote:
| 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...
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| That's great, thanks for the pointer.
| dboreham wrote:
| >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?
| grenoire wrote:
| Sort of, indirectly. The biggest incentive is not having
| to invest in the new infrastructure required to comply
| with the standards.
| rglullis wrote:
| You just described Stellar.
| [deleted]
| rbjorklin wrote:
| You pretty much just described Stellar. Take a few minutes and
| watch Coinbase's intro materials on it:
| https://www.coinbase.com/earn/stellar/lesson/1
| jhanschoo wrote:
| Quite different. Stellar facilitates pinning to foreign
| currencies, a different problem from moving money between
| countries.
| retube wrote:
| 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.
| superkuh wrote:
| No, Bitcoin allows anyone to send and receive money. WeChat
| allows some people to send and receive money.
| Technically wrote:
| > Basically, I think the underlying idea is valuable - low-
| cost, fast, reliable, accessible money transfers - clearly
| something missing right now in this world
|
| You could also mandate that wires are free as part of necessary
| banking structure. I don't see why this needs a new currency at
| all; our financial system is shitty because there's little
| political control exercised on behalf of consumers.
|
| Still, papering over the mismanagement of government with
| predatory private services is the theme of the future of the
| US. We may as well accept that we have no control.
| rognjen wrote:
| > Is there a reason this is tied to the blockchain?
|
| Yes: so that Facebook can do as it wishes and not have to
| follow government financial regulation.
| [deleted]
| davidgerard wrote:
| The answer is: even if any of the above held, Facebook are
| doing it to:
|
| (1) build a giant sucking data-miner atop all consumer
| commerce;
|
| (2) print their own money in such quantities that governments
| can't tell them what to do any more;
|
| (3) establish themselves as providers of the digital identity
| standard for the world, so that you need to go through Facebook
| to use money at all.
|
| There are those who have proposed Libra-like basket currencies
| seriously; Yanis Varoufakis seriously proposed that the Libra
| 1.0 plan would be a great idea - if done by a public
| institution such as the IMF, and not by a private company.
| https://archive.is/YKgQ9
| wpietri wrote:
| For those unfamiliar, davidgerard wrote a great book on
| blockchain hype: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/book/
|
| And has recently come out with a book on Libra. I haven't
| finished it yet, but it's great so far:
| https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/libra/
| baby wrote:
| 1) think of it as a centralized database that needs
| replication, you'd be a bit worried if this central place got
| attacked, so then you need some gossip-based protocol in place
| to allow some users to police the system. Consensus is a simple
| one because it allows most users to trust that consensus was
| agreed on correctly, as opposed to systems like transparency
| protocols that require users to more willingly engage in
| policing.
|
| 2) it is tied to non profits as well! The whole point is to
| fund this project by companies, no a company
|
| 3) we will support single currencies (a USD coin, for example)
|
| 4) that's what we're working on!
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| If a sufficiently large nation state orders the companies
| involved to deny or override a transaction, is the gossip
| protocol/blockchain useful at all in denying this? Or is this
| one of those mechanisms only used for keeping out low
| level/underfunded attackers?
| baby wrote:
| The system is governed by an entity in Switzerland that
| must follow regulations, so such a scenario would not be an
| attack on the system (and thus not be in scope for
| consensus). That being said, I don't know much about laws
| and regulations so that's the extent of my understanding :)
| tomp wrote:
| 2) Does Facebook (or any other for-profit company) get access
| to the data (now or ever in the future)?
|
| 3) So if I want to send money (from say GBP) to someone in
| Japan, what would happen? Is the FX exchange seamless or will
| I need to use some intermediary coin?
| randall wrote:
| 2) I don't believe so. 3) The hope is you don't have to use
| an intermediary coin.
| davidgerard wrote:
| 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, Zuckerberg and Facebook's track record
| on such promises is that they consistently do this
| anyway. Then Zuckerberg apologises, then he does it
| _again_.
|
| Just by looking at Facebook's past behaviour, you can
| assume that an important purpose for Diem is to collect
| personal information. Because everything they do is to
| collect personal information.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > 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
| ;-)?
| baby wrote:
| As I said elsewhere this is not related to Novi. Novi is
| just a wallet using DIEM, and will have its own users
| (like any wallet or bank or trading platform has).
|
| That being said, there is a lot of work being put in
| making sure that FB doesn't have access to Novi user
| data. Of course, sometimes one employee's mistake can
| lead to infringement of a claim, so to avoid that good
| frameworks have to be put into place.
| baby wrote:
| 2) It's a transparent payment network, so everybody (even
| you) gets access to the data on the network
|
| 3) That's a complicated answer that involves more than just
| the blockchain (as you need to convert fiat from/to digital
| currency) so it depends on the VASPs (the wallets) not on
| DIEM.
| bawolff wrote:
| 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.
| summm wrote:
| They do. It's called Taler ( https://taler.net/ )
| bawolff wrote:
| 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.
| mareko wrote:
| These are great questions. Here are my thoughts / answers:
|
| > 1. Is there a reason this is tied to the blockchain
|
| For FB, you're 100% right. FB could have likely just used a
| relational DB in the short term. However, if you don't want to
| tie this to a single company (your second question), then a
| blockchain does make it easier for multiple entities to agree
| on the state of the db. I would argue that modern Proof of
| Stake protocols are starting to be competitive with Proof of
| Work in terms of security, in large part because unlike Proof
| of Work, they allow for both positive _and_ negative incentives
| for incentivizing behavior. For example, we've yet to see the
| types of double spend attacks on newer PoS chains (e.g. Cosmos)
| like the ones we saw on Ethereum Classic a few years ago.
|
| > 2. Is there a reason this would be tied to a company
|
| No, and in fact, this is what makes most permissionless
| blockchains so valuable. The problem is that most of them are
| not useable enough for what Facebook wants to accomplish. I say
| most because, in my view, Celo (https://celo.org and
| https://valoraapp.com) does. It's permissionless, programable,
| highly scalable, has a built in stablecoin and identity
| protocol, and most importantly, uses new zk-SNARK cryptography
| to let mobile apps sync trustlessly and near instantly. It also
| offsets 100% of its carbon emissions by buying carbon credits
| using block rewards.
|
| > 3. Why a "new currency" ("stablecoin")?
|
| I agree 100% and already the market is starting to tell us that
| USD pegged stablecoins are the most interesting of stablecoins.
|
| > 4. I'm sure there are many issues with fraud/reversible
| transactions/KYC/anti-terrorism/anti-money-laundering that
| would need to be resolved somehow
|
| Yes! This is an interesting read on the topic:
| https://www.coincenter.org/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-an...
| [deleted]
| ourcat wrote:
| Interestingly hosted by Wordpress.com (VIP).
| camgunz wrote:
| 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.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It functions like diamonds, real estate and some other
| commodities used to... medium of exchange for illegal
| transactions.
|
| It's pretty obvious -- the price spikes with the rise of
| certain internet grifts and wanes as they settle down.
| fastball wrote:
| Yep, you're right, people are definitely only using
| cryptocurrency for illegal transactions.
| colordrops wrote:
| 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 dealing with gold anymore.
|
| I don't know about Diem in particular, but a state or corporate
| issued currency is not a general indictment of cryptocurrency.
| camgunz wrote:
| 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.
| colordrops wrote:
| You changed the subject completely. What does your comment
| have to do with it being regulated or not?
| rytill wrote:
| It's just a long number with no intrinsic worth. Like
| money.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Money is backed by a central bank that is accountable to
| a government body. Crypto is backed by speculation and
| tech bros (shorthand for the hyper technocratic
| libertarian).
| jackric wrote:
| Accountable to a government body with opaque motives and
| capture over its citizens. Crypto has inspectable source
| code and miners and coin holders can jump ship if
| shenanigans are perceived
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How'd that Ethereum DAO attack go? Some folks just
| decided to hard fork the chain. Much trust, such
| governance.
|
| I'd elect for a suboptimal government over such
| mechanisms any day, which seems to be a global consensus
| when you observe the lack of volatility in reserve
| currency values.
| rytill wrote:
| Then the market decided that the new chain was more
| valuable than the original. Still decentralized. Forks
| are fair game.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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.
| icebraining wrote:
| That's not how forks work.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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.
| delaaxe wrote:
| Crypto is backed by immense amounts of power
| (electricity), and more specifically, computing power
| (which is scarce)
| rytill wrote:
| Shared speculation is pretty powerful.
| [deleted]
| lbotos wrote:
| 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.
| camgunz wrote:
| 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.
| camgunz wrote:
| 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
| cryptocurrency's core scarcity hamstrings monetary
| policy. No competent government would ever accept such
| restrictions. This is a feature for cryptocurrency
| enthusiasts (digital gold bugs) but a huge shortcoming
| for everyone else.
| rytill wrote:
| 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.
| camgunz wrote:
| 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.
| rytill wrote:
| Also agreed on Diem. My best guess is it's a way to
| legally get around the legacy financial system to some
| end. Which end I don't know yet.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Being able to pay your taxes with it gives it some more
| worth than just numbers.
| rytill wrote:
| Paying US taxes doesn't count. That's like saying I can
| pay gas fees with ETH.
| javajosh wrote:
| Well, its a long number that satisfies a simple predicate,
| set by fiat, that makes this class of numbers rare. It is
| the ultimate "artificial scarcity"! It's too bad there
| can't be a better way to add new values into the system
| that scales better with, say, how much the system is used,
| or how much utility it gives to people, instead of how much
| oil you can afford to burn to get one.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| If you ever try to cross any border custom with more than a
| certain amount of gold, you'd realize that it's more
| regulated than you think it is.
| colordrops wrote:
| That is obvious, but that is not something especially
| unique to gold - pretty much everything physical is
| regulated at the border. Yours is more of a statement about
| border security than gold. To bring it back to crypto, you
| can easily cross a border without your crypto being
| touched.
| waihtis wrote:
| 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.
| cloudinshape wrote:
| 10 years of debatable so-called-crimes with crypto VS at
| least 5000 years of wars, crimes and corruption with gold
| and government money...which side are we supposed to be on?
| colordrops wrote:
| Ok, but that doesn't alter my point.
| isthatsoup wrote:
| compared with all the crime and scams done with fiat
| currencies
| waihtis wrote:
| Well, one is a new phenonenom and other is established.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| He's right about roasting the planet though. Scarcity without
| computational (and literal) power is necessary.
|
| Maybe if we could use the inherent incalculability of the
| three-body problem as the basis for a cryptocurrency. You'd
| need to observe the universe to "find" astrocoins.
|
| It would be Astrology on steroids.
|
| Of course that leaves out verifiability, encryption,
| anonymous identity yet ownership.
|
| What if you (somehow) knew both parts of the quantum
| uncertainty portions of a particle because you initiated the
| system. Then you could demonstrate ownership by being able to
| predict the location or the momentum at any time based on
| that.
|
| But it would be fun to hold cryptocoins called Heisenbergs
|
| But that is an actual physical particle.
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| https://primecoin.io/ to compute Prime Numbers
| derefr wrote:
| > He's right about roasting the planet though.
|
| ...no? Diem/Libra is built on Cosmos, which is a proof-of-
| stake system, not a proof-of-work system. Validator nodes
| in a proof-of-stake system do not compete to work ever
| harder to mine the same resources.
|
| There are a rather large _number_ of such validator nodes
| (100+ at minimum), but that 's also true of banks when you
| translate their Highly-Available mainframe stacks into
| equivalent Highly-Available commodity-PC stacks. (I.e.
| they're not spending any more electricity per tx than the
| ACH system is.)
| camgunz wrote:
| I'll cop to hand-waving and painting cryptocurrencies w/
| a broad brush here. But it seems like Diem hasn't really
| figured out what its system is gonna be: https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/Diem_(digital_currency)#Implem.... Looking
| at their docs and such, it seems like it'll be
| centralized under the stakeholders until they implement
| proof of stake, which IMO makes it just another reserve
| bank.
| hobby-coder-guy wrote:
| Astrology?
| logifail wrote:
| > If you can get it anonymously, you can move it anywhere you
| want as long as you stay on the blockchain
|
| Q: Is this fundamentally different to having a suitcase full
| of cash?
| alvarosevilla95 wrote:
| No, but only if your suitcase will only open if unlocked by
| a cryptographically secure key and no one can open it
| through other methods. They can't steal the suitcase itself
| either. And you can instantly teleport the contents of your
| suitcase to an equivalent suitcase held by any other
| individual on the planet. And third parties can't
| arbitrarily devalue the contents of your suitcase by
| printing more of it.
| samatman wrote:
| The last part of this almost certainly doesn't apply to
| "Diem".
| alvarosevilla95 wrote:
| I'd argue none of the above apply to Diem actually. I'm
| definitely referring to traditional, actual blockchains
| logifail wrote:
| > [..] no one can open it through other methods
|
| ... other than https://xkcd.com/538/ ?
| alvarosevilla95 wrote:
| That still counts as using the key to open it :)
| mateuszf wrote:
| > Q: Is this fundamentally different to having a suitcase
| full of cash?
|
| Yes, government can't print bitcoin. If you store cash - in
| the long term you will lose buying power. If bitcoin gets
| adopted as a store of value - nobody will be able to print
| it at will.
| derefr wrote:
| It's very hard to take a suitcase full of cash across a
| border. It's very easy to take a private key for a wallet-
| account full of cryptocurrency across a border.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It 's very hard to take a suitcase full of cash across a
| border._
|
| Depends on the border.
|
| As long as you declare the cash to the authorities, there
| are many borders you can cross with great flipping wads
| of cash. Some industries operate mostly on cash
| (restaurants, for example), and "suitcases full of cash"
| isn't just for mobsters and movie villains.
| mthoms wrote:
| Where is that? In most of the west it's roughly $10k US
| (+/- 30%).
| deevolution wrote:
| A suitcase full of cash is much more difficult to transport
| risk-free compared to bitcoin.
| ExtraServings wrote:
| yet infinitely easier to spend.
| Heliosmaster wrote:
| Not really, and that is precisely one of the point for
| crypto advocates. To be used as "virtual" (just non
| physical) cash, easier to manage.
| Mxs2000 wrote:
| I've heard it's easier to travel conspicuously and less
| risky than traveling with suitcases of cash.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I could be wrong, but isn't the point of Diem to create a
| jointly managed payment network that's auditable to its
| stakeholders?
|
| Seems like a viable reason to create a cryptocurrency that
| isn't intended to bypass state regulations.
| fastball wrote:
| 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 and
| sell crypto with government-backed currency. However, the whole
| point is to have currency that you can use in place of normal
| currency. Currency that you are paid in, that you shop in, that
| you pay your bills in, that you pay back your friends with. At
| the start, there is a lot of fiat <-> crypto. But the goal is
| to make it so that people can use crypto for everything, and
| therefore never need to sell it for any major currency.
|
| If you use crypto, every year you will need to "drop out" into
| fiat less and less. Just like every year your electric car gets
| greener.
|
| Ironically the analogy extends even better to your parting
| shot:
|
| > this stuff is just cumbersome currency that roasts the
| planet.
|
| Again, short-term thinking. As a purely digital currency,
| cryptocurrency gets greener every year as the grid gets
| greener. If you want to save the planet, the first step is to
| electrify _everything_. Step 2 is to make your electricity
| production as green as possible (preferably with nuclear).
| noelsusman wrote:
| 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?
| cloudinshape wrote:
| Because the government will not always be on your side, as
| 2020 demonstrated so well what many peoples outside the US
| have know from experience for decades.
| fastball wrote:
| 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"
| money.
|
| Or, maybe you want to send your money somewhere your
| government doesn't want you to send it (or their government
| doesn't want the other party to get it).
|
| Obviously there is a lot more to cryptocurrency than just
| "not being issued by a government" as well though. There is
| general privacy benefits (Monero) or the promise of
| innovation if you have programmable money / contracts
| (Ethereum).
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| 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 cliche, but apart from slightly
| limiting my freedom this prevents bad guys doing nasty
| stuff aswell.
| cloudinshape wrote:
| The end of the gold standard in the 70s meant the US
| could "afford" to fight infinite wars by just printing
| dollars and passing the real cost to the rest of the
| world, that is why the US is now the world's biggest
| borrower nation when it used to be the world's biggest
| creditor nation. The current state of endless military
| interventions is only possible because of the huge
| deficits in the US that are not possible with hard money.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"...My government not wanting me to send money
| somewhere: Well, this might be a cliche, 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.
| camgunz wrote:
| 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 typical counterargument is something like "well what
| about Saudi Arabia", but I think it's pretty easy for an
| oppressive regime to just say "you can't use
| cryptocurrency" and punish you severely for it--to the
| degree you won't.
|
| Anyway, I just don't think cryptocurrency is a solution
| to this, and even if it is it's antidemocratic.
| dmantis wrote:
| 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.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| 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.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| > it should be addressed democratically - protests,
| lobbying your representatives, even voting.
|
| That hasn't worked yet for Wikileaks. If this worked
| and/or was the best way to deal with the types of
| problems Wikileaks is exposing, there would be no need
| for Wikileaks to exist.
|
| The reason Wikileaks does exist is because, typically,
| when we attempt to address atrocities "democratically" we
| get nowhere.
|
| On the other hand...
|
| > Inventing a new currency that is, for a little while,
| hard to track by the government
|
| This _has_ worked for Wikileaks in the past. When the US
| persecuted Wikileaks, Bitcoin helped to heavily negate
| the immediate impact of this action.
|
| > The form that persecution takes is secondary.
|
| In that case, why can't the form that Wikileaks'
| solutions take be secondary as well? If we are in
| agreement that Wikileaks is an important organization,
| then when addressing atrocities "democratically" fails,
| what would be wrong with short-term innovation?
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yeah, but both hyperinflation and hyperdeflation have
| occurred with Bitcoin.
|
| At least with fiat currency, you have a central bank that
| can TRY to take steps to fix those conditions.
| jMyles wrote:
| > 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.
| notahacker wrote:
| The problem with an argument that welfare states 'nearly
| invariably' devolve into empire is that even the most
| cursory examination of the world's welfare states makes
| it clear they nearly invariably don't.
|
| The reverse argument actually works much better:
| throughout millenia of metallic standards countries
| regularly fought wars to plunder gold reserves from
| weaker states to repay their debts or boost their
| economy. And didn't even make enough from doing so to be
| able to afford welfare. Now they don't have to acquire
| shiny metal every time things are bad, they very seldom
| fight wars and even relinquished control over the empires
| they'd built under the gold standard. If there is a
| causal relationship between monetary systems and empire
| building, it's quite clear that it works the opposite way
| round and fiat money _reduces_ the tendency to use
| military power in service of economic growth.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the welfare-warfare model. It
| seems like it requires a bunch of preconditions:
|
| * The cycle of debt needs to be bootstrapped. You need
| some initial borrowing well beyond current (expected)
| repayment capacity. This implies both some overspending
| and lack of due diligence by lenders willing to extend
| the rope.
|
| * The debt is denominated in a currency the borrower
| doesn't control. If you're American borrowing dollars, or
| Russia borrowing roubles, you can always deflate the
| currency to moot the debt.
|
| * The state has no legal leverage against lenders. A
| continuation of the tactics above-- I could imagine a
| desperate nation simply refusing to redeem its bonds, or
| even prosecuting people attempting to claim then.
|
| There may be incentives and default-approaches that
| encourage the growth of empire to feed a debt addiction,
| but it's far from the only way. In the worst case, you
| end up with a default and limited to dealing with lenders
| who are legally required to deal with you (i.e. requiring
| pension plans or state-owned enterprises to sponge up
| government bonds) until someone else is willing to take a
| punt.
| vmception wrote:
| 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
| samatman wrote:
| 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 of nature.
|
| I'm not convince the issuing schedule for BTC is ideal
| either. Grin, to pick a cybercoin which has some
| interesting technical innovations, issues one coin per
| minute, forever, and since coins are lost, this might be
| better.
|
| But I like the idea of a _transnational_ currency, where no
| one government is in a position to change the rate of
| issue, and I think Bitcoin has real potential as a refuge
| for value to flee to, in the event that the increasingly
| reckless experiments which Western governments and their
| central banks are making with their currencies come back to
| bite us.
|
| Don't think it would spell the end of sovereign currencies,
| either. It would force them to be more honest, though, and
| that would be a good thing.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > 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
| samatman wrote:
| 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!
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Say what? Coins were intrinsically valued and not used
| like currency as it is today. It wasn't until about the
| 1500s we even really see currency being used and it was
| _hand waves a bunch of stuff_ thanks to the Dutch
| merchant class. In Rome people didn 't spend money, they
| hoarded it, because the pile itself was a sign of wealth.
| Spending it was looked down upon. They instead purchased
| primarily through bartering of goods and resources. There
| was no middle class either to spend money, you were
| nobility, a solider, or a slave.
|
| A lot of folks want to apply modern economics to
| historical contexts where it cannot be. There's too much
| missing when taking in only from the lens of Economics to
| evaluate or judge things accurately.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Having some inflation is important, though, to prime the
| economy for growth. Low level, consistent, inflation is a
| good thing.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Fucking true. Zero inflation for couple decades?
| Absolutely destroys a nation.
| samatman wrote:
| Opinions differ substantially on this point.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| No, they really don't. Uninformed opinions will argue
| this because they're just that... uninformed. I'm sorry
| but no one who has studied economics will believe this
| there's zero evidence to support the idea a low-level of
| inflation is bad. There's only crackpots and idiots who
| don't have economics degrees, or even enough math to
| understand the fucking equations (which aren't hard but
| also don't always provide intuitive results).
|
| In general, without some form of inflation, you end up
| with a deflationary spiral because people stop spending
| and the economy seizes up. No one will spend money if
| just holding it makes it more valuable. It then becomes a
| race to horde as much as you can for as long as you can.
| It's also, quite uhhh... perplexing for me, to not
| increase the money supply when populations are
| increasing; because, they're increasing the value of the
| money by increasing demand for it.
|
| Central banks are the result and answer to reckless
| unregulated financial markets crashing, being
| manipulated, and destroying lives... Oh shit, kind of
| sounds like bitcoin, doesn't it? Everyone does this
| "central bank boogeyman" and thinks it should go away but
| they all absolutely ignore why they exist in the first
| place.
|
| There's a ton of quality stuff to be debated in regards
| to economics-- this is not one of them.
| cloudinshape wrote:
| Not true at all.
|
| People, and state economists, have confused inflation and
| deflation so much for their propaganda that right now is
| almost imposible to have a discussion around it primarily
| because different people don't mean the same things when
| they use those words.
|
| Is the inflation you talk about consumer price inflation?
| is it assets price inflation? or is it money supply
| inflation? is the deflation caused by increases in
| productivity or is it caused by decrease in demand? Is
| inflation a product of regulations? of corruption? or was
| it caused by central banks and politicians' stupidity?
|
| Those are all very different situations that require very
| different approaches, but because the "inflation-good
| deflation-bad" mantra has been repeated for so long
| (without any actual proof!) idiots now can't see past it,
| and think it's fine because they call themselves
| economists.
| tromp wrote:
| I believe we're discussing supply inflation.
| taffer wrote:
| 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.
| samatman wrote:
| Economists aren't scientists.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > Economists aren't scientists.
|
| How do you define scientist, and who else isn't included?
|
| Like, micro-economists do a lot of interesting
| experimental work that certainly seems like science.
|
| Macro-economics is pretty much entrail-reading because we
| fundamentally don't understand how the modern economy
| functions, and is massively political and hijacked by a
| variety of interests, but that's a subfield that even
| economists agree is problematic.
| pwm wrote:
| Depends on the use-case. Bitcoin's current zeitgeist is
| digital gold/store of value and from that point of view
| deflation is a strength that complements inflationary
| currencies.
| fbelzile wrote:
| 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.
| camgunz wrote:
| > Again, short-term thinking. As a purely digital currency,
| cryptocurrency gets greener every year as the grid gets
| greener.
|
| I'm happy to pause all cryptocurrency mining and transactions
| until humanity is carbon free. I doubt long BTCs will be
| though.
| fastball wrote:
| Ah yes, the luddite approach, an age-old classic.
| camgunz wrote:
| You can dismiss it as such, but can you really deny that:
|
| - Cryptocurrency uses tons of electricity
|
| - Climate change is real and super bad
|
| I would (obviously) rather have a livable Earth than
| cryptocurrency, and I don't think that's weird.
| shuringai wrote:
| Las Vegas also has a shitton of electric waste, how about
| we start suddenly going green with that? How is it that
| people only care about green earth when the target is the
| smallest slice of the pie?
| camgunz wrote:
| Oh I care about that too, and I also care about the
| draining of aquifers in the US Southwest, etc. etc. But
| this is a cryptocurrency thread so, here we are.
| icebraining wrote:
| Bitcoin is not that small a slice nowadays, though.
| Estimates put it higher than Las Vegas.
| fastball wrote:
| - Yes, but a significant portion of that is coming from
| renewables / excess generation. Additionally, work is
| constantly being done to improve the energy efficiency of
| crypto.
|
| - Climate change is real, but I think it would need to be
| much worse than it is in order to justify halting human
| progress. In fact, continued human progress is our best
| bet for halting climate change.
|
| - False dichotomy.
| andylynch wrote:
| That might work, until you need to pay your tax bill. Or sell
| to the public sector. These are large parts of the economy!
| And for most people (I know mot everyone or everywhere), do
| you really want to manage accounts and deal with tax returns
| for multiple currencies when one already is accepted
| everywhere in town?
| mateuszf wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Depends on the regulation type we're talking about. Yes, state
| may require KYC, AML, and taxes, but in case of bitcoin they
| can't regulate the inflation.
| joeseppy wrote:
| 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.
| camgunz wrote:
| 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.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Calibra was renamed to Novi, and now Libra has been renamed to
| Diem? How confusing.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Anything by Facebook is a no. Anything cryptocurrency by Facebook
| is a double, triple, quadruple no.
| st1x7 wrote:
| So mixing shady with shady doesn't cancel them out? Huh.
| christiansakai wrote:
| You can only get murkier shades.
| ehejsbbejsk wrote:
| I still don't see why anyone should use crypto in place of fiat.
| The space is dominated by commercial interests and they're not at
| all focused on dislodging traditional financial institutions that
| are entrenched which is the source of all the problems.
| martini333 wrote:
| "Powered by WordPress.com VIP"
| chodeboy wrote:
| Can someone give me a quick rundown of Facebook's involvement? I
| get that they are the driving force behind it but what does it
| mean in practice? Do they have any power over the currency and
| its flow? Is Facebook governing the currency? Are there privacy
| concerns and if so, how do manifest in practice? Is it tied to
| Facebook stock or something, if not then what's the point?
| atareh wrote:
| 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...
| nathias wrote:
| Digital value transfer is a oligopoly of a few US companies that
| can effectively exclude anyone in the world from the digital
| economy in general, any innovation and any competition by anyone
| at all is a very good thing. It's too bad that fb listened to the
| US politics and made their project much worse, but its still very
| good in terms of cyrpto adoption by the non-technical people
| which can in turn make way for other, better projects.
| rishabhd wrote:
| Just did a search on site for "facebook" (ignored community
| forums), all the results are very carefully worded and scrubbed
| as of now.
| flixic wrote:
| Same was true for Libra as well. The only place you would find
| "Facebook" was FAQs (to say that it is NOT a FB product, fully
| independent, nothing to see here) and whitepapers (that
| explained FB role in more detail, but not more honesty).
| x87678r wrote:
| Are any crypto currencies widely used for transactions these
| days? ie the classic coffee shop purchase. BTC had a start but
| now seems only useful for people buying as an asset.
| chillacy wrote:
| LTC is often the cheapest mainstream coin for moving stuff
| around on chain, and has faster confirm times. They seem to be
| focusing more on transactions as opposed to storing value like
| BTC.
| user-the-name wrote:
| No. Cryptocurrencies are currently used mainly for:
|
| 1. Speculation on highly manipulated markets.
|
| 2. Illegal transactions.
|
| 3. Ransomware.
|
| 4. Innovative new kinds of fraud using smart contracts.
| flixic wrote:
| 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.
| jamesmehaffey wrote:
| I agree with you that the fees for some of the
| cryptocurrency's make them impractical, and this certainly
| will hinder mainstream adoption. I do not think that I will
| try to pay for coffee with some of my antique gold coins any
| time soon, but that does not render them any less valuable.
| bitcoin plays a similar role in the context of digital assets
| for the moment. It frustrates me when I read other comments
| here dismissing cryptocurrency out of hand without taking the
| time to understand it. As you rightly point out, some tokens
| are better at certain tasks depending on the situation In the
| same way that some fiat currencies are circumstantially
| better than others... I think a number of people in Lebanon
| would prefer BTC to LBP right now regardless of the fees. For
| my part, I am more concerned with micro transaction fees for
| running applications, and I will leave the speculation to
| someone else.
| everfree wrote:
| A simple native payment on Ethereum is only $0.16 right now,
| complex transactions inflate the average.
|
| And roll-up transactions are currently sitting at less than a
| penny.
| meowster wrote:
| 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.
| 1996 wrote:
| > 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...
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Right now crypto is being mainly used for decentralized finance
| involving larger transactions for lending and savings with
| actual yield. See https://defipulse.com for some of the largest
| dapps in the space (has grown to have $14 billion in assets in
| less than one year).
| anaxag0ras wrote:
| In my experience, most shops that accept Bitcoin also accept
| Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum. I personally use BCH to purchase
| domains from porkbun.
| asciimov wrote:
| Diem/Libra seems like a convoluted scheme for Facebook to be able
| to globally repatriate money at will. Sure they would have to
| manage to grow it to a certain scale first, but by controlling
| the whole wooden nickel factory it wouldn't be hard nor
| detectable for them to do.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "We're a creepy Orwellian company with a demonstrated record of
| having no morals and psychologically manipulating people not
| only for profit, but for sport!
|
| Have faith and trust in our cryptocurrency!"
| ptrwis wrote:
| My general impression after reading between the lines over last
| years about Libra is they are targeting in-app micropayments and
| more like a competition to something like Paysafecard.
| geraldbauer wrote:
| FYI: I collect all things Facebook's Diem (formerly Libra) at the
| Awesome Diem (formerly Libra) page [1] incl. Best Libra Book of
| the Year 2020 Award and much more. [1]:
| https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-diem
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I don't think an interesting cryptocurrency will ever come out of
| the US , they have the dollar.
| whb07 wrote:
| There are some within that realize the U.S is in an
| unsustainable path of devaluing, borrowing, and excess spending
| in pursuit of failed policies. There is still hope!
| smt88 wrote:
| What does that have to do with crypto?
| whb07 wrote:
| hard to devalue a currency you don't control. which then
| leads to reigning in of the leviathan.
| blackmanta wrote:
| Technically, avalanche is a US coin. It was also the first
| proof of stake crypto currency but I have not seen it picking
| up much traction in the US. https://www.avalabs.org
|
| *EDIT Avalanche was not the first proof of state crypto
| currency.
| josh2600 wrote:
| Avalanche is not the first PoS coin. You could make an
| argument that the first was Tezos but there are PoS like
| instruments that predate it significantly.
| npongratz wrote:
| Looks like Peercoin predates Tezos by about six years (2012
| vs 2018):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercoin
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tezos
| traceddd wrote:
| AFAIK peercoin is recognized as the first PoS
| cryptocurrency.
| endergen wrote:
| This is the most on point comment.
| obilgic wrote:
| US has a culture that knows that resisting the change isn't way
| to stay as #1, and you better innovate and disrupt yourself.
| However, state's innovation might not end up being what crypto
| advocates are looking for.
| smt88 wrote:
| I wish the US still had that culture. Our federal legislature
| has been intentionally deadlocked by a single man for years,
| without any hope of that changing.
| kortilla wrote:
| This mistake in this line of thinking is that innovation
| comes from the government.
| smt88 wrote:
| And yet here I am on the internet, an invention of
| government-funded researchers.
|
| But seriously: I didn't innovation originates from the
| government, but our elected officials are certainly a
| reflection of the culture of our country.
|
| In fact, one of our major political parties rages against
| the things that made the US innovative: creating a haven
| for immigrant scientists and entrepreneurs, excellent
| research universities, and social programs that acted as
| a safety net for anyone taking a risk on an innovative
| business.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| > US has a culture that knows that resisting the change isn't
| way to stay as #1
|
| Are you kidding? This is the country that avoids the Metric
| system remember.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Metric_America oops.
| obilgic wrote:
| Are you saying that because of It's refusal of metric
| system, It has lost its #1 spot?
| commentrix wrote:
| So you reject the hypothesis that the NSA developed bitcoin?
| chaostheory wrote:
| Maybe Facebook sees that the US dollar will no longer be the
| reserve currency one day relatively soon?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Wouldn't bet on it. People said the Yen was going to displace
| USD, then they said that about the Euro...
| chaostheory wrote:
| 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
| kortilla wrote:
| 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.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Because it gives people a good reason to use Facebook's
| Diem
| Fnoord wrote:
| Cryptocurrencies are being used by so-called cybercriminals
| (cybercrooks) as we speak. Because it is decentralized, its
| more difficult to close down illegal transactions, and they
| consider themselves anonymous after mixing.
|
| I don't find cryptocurrency interesting at all for a free
| society. I don't see any purpose of it, _if_ you live in a free
| society. And I _do_ live in one.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| dollars are used by all sorts of criminals and terrorists
| Lammy wrote:
| 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.
| moocowtruck wrote:
| i find the entire site difficult to read :\
| grishka wrote:
| Don't you think it could use some more animations?
|
| /s
| Ice_cream_suit wrote:
| Poorer countries are going to see this as Western neo-
| colonialism.
|
| They have a point.
|
| Would you want your national currency to be controlled by a
| Chinese private company?
| latchkey wrote:
| I love clicking "I do not accept cookies" on a facebook site and
| having it not do anything else. It feels so liberating.
| halukakin wrote:
| If a company owns the regulation of a widely used currency, how
| will it be devalued if it becomes necessary.
|
| Popular currencies need to be regulated by the people, even if
| indirectly. Otherwise in times of crisis these currencies will be
| harmful to most.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Good riddance but im not sure how. The entire idea of Libra as a
| cryptocurrency was more ludicrous than any state adopting btc. It
| essentially was the western Union / paypal with same contributors
| but with a shiny new word, crypto.
|
| My question. What is the "benefit" of using Libra when you can
| just as easily transact with xrp ? Dictatorship by Facebook
| first, tracking of spending for MOAR ADS.
|
| Who benefits from Libra ? Not the end user at least. Oh and fees.
| If there are no fees on Libra,why is PayPal investing money in
| this model ?
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| still a hell to the no
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Whims of an amoral and decadent empire.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Are they rebranding because of bad publicity?
| [deleted]
| e_carra wrote:
| It was my first thought! Maybe.
| [deleted]
| flixic wrote:
| Yes. They never say it outright, but this is the way their PR
| statement begins:
|
| "The Libra Association announces the adoption of a new name and
| the recruitment of key executives, reinforcing its
| organizational independence. Now transitioning to the name
| "Diem", which denotes a new day for the project, the Diem
| Association will continue to pursue a mission of building a
| safe, secure and compliant payment system that empowers people
| and businesses around the world."
|
| https://www.diem.com/en-us/updates/diem-association/
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The whole "unbanked" thing is really unconvincing, because
| there's no way Libra/Diem will be usable for people who don't
| have identity documents and the evidence needed for KYC/AML
| forms, and that excludes most unbanked people.
|
| As for international money transfers: TransferWise and the like
| are already providing better solutions in that space without
| forcing you to use Facebook Coins. Now you might say that mostly
| caters to the rich world, and that's true, but the people who
| can't use TransferWise are probably not going to be able to use
| Libra/Diem either for the same reasons they can't use
| TransferWise: ID documents, KYC/AML, plus capital controls and
| sanction regimes which aren't magically going to disappear for
| this new currency.
|
| It won't provide one of the few benefits of Bitcoin etc either,
| namely the ability to make illegal transactions more easily.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > The whole "unbanked" thing is really unconvincing, because
| there's no way Libra/Diem will be usable for people who don't
| have identity documents and the evidence needed for KYC/AML
| forms, and that excludes most unbanked people.
|
| Who says the countries this will be used in have KYC/AML? The
| unbanked people this would be for aren't in countries that have
| those laws.
|
| > As for international money transfers: TransferWise and the
| like are already providing better solutions in that space
| without forcing you to use Facebook Coins. Now you might say
| that mostly caters to the rich world, and that's true, but the
| people who can't use TransferWise are probably not going to be
| able to use Libra/Diem either for the same reasons they can't
| use TransferWise: ID documents, KYC/AML, plus capital controls
| and sanction regimes which aren't magically going to disappear
| for this new currency.
|
| Can't use transferwise, so can't use something else.
|
| This isn't aimed at people who can use banking where KYC or AML
| apply. It's for people who are curently using other unbanking
| payment methods.
| josh2600 wrote:
| Anything that's settled in dollars or dollar-like synthetic
| instruments will have KYC/AML.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Says who? Who is going to enforce some random African
| country that is in the middle of a civil war to have those?
|
| Also, lots of drug deals are settled in US dollars, they
| don't have that. So your point that anything settled in
| dollars will have those laws is way off the mark and easily
| disproven.
| eloff wrote:
| That's not how finance works. If you don't follow the
| rules, you get cut off from the rest of the ecosystem
| which is tightly controlled by the US. So if diem wants
| to operate at all, they must adhere to the rules
| regardless of which countries they are operating in.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| This is meant to be a completely different ecosystem, no?
| An ecosystem not controlled with the US. This isn't a
| normal financal service, it's not banking, it's outside
| of banking hence why it's aimed and people without banks.
|
| And other companies are already in this space providing
| basically the same service.
|
| It seems to me, people applying how companies 1st world
| countries + the US operate to how companies in 3rd world
| countries (except the US) have to operate.
| eloff wrote:
| That might be workable only if you specifically don't
| interface with the outside financial world.
|
| If for example you require a third party exchange to sell
| to fiat currency, that should work.
|
| But that exchange has to do the KYC stuff and the
| unbanked are still cut out.
|
| Now if it's a local exchange for a local currency, not
| USD then is fine.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Now if it's a local exchange for a local currency, not
| USD then is fine.
|
| They can exchange in physical currency which would be
| acceptable in most third world countries and with the
| amount physical currency floating around they wouldn't
| need to get any from the US, no?
| eloff wrote:
| I don't think you could do that at any scale and escape
| the wrath of the US.
|
| That runs afoul of most money laundering regulations, so
| if you have any presence in the US they'll go after you,
| and they'll prosecute anyone with any serious connection
| to it and extradite those people to the US where
| possible.
|
| Moving money across international borders is not a
| problem you can just engineer around. You have to play by
| the rules.
| janeroe wrote:
| > This is meant to be a completely different ecosystem,
| no? An ecosystem not controlled with the US.
|
| There is no such thing as an ecosystem not controlled by
| the US. You have any ties with the States (and Facebook,
| clearly, does), you gonna comply with whatever rules they
| come up with. If you don't believe me, ask Huawei's top
| manager. Or lots of other people like him.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| If you don't play by the US's rules you can't withdraw in
| USD.
|
| Which is the only fiat currency Diem supports conversion
| into right now.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > If you don't play by the US's rules you can't withdraw
| in USD.
|
| The dollar is traded so much that I don't think they need
| to actually get dollars from the US to be able to use the
| dollar. If it's going into banks, yea, but if you're just
| giving people the notes, you're good to go.
| ardy42 wrote:
| >>> Says who? Who is going to enforce some random African
| country that is in the middle of a civil war to have
| those?
|
| > This is meant to be a completely different ecosystem,
| no? An ecosystem not controlled with the US. This isn't a
| normal financal service, it's not banking, it's outside
| of banking hence why it's aimed and people without banks.
|
| Last I checked, Facebook is a US company, with a US
| headquarters, publicly traded on a US stock market, and
| with an American CEO and controlling shareholder. So,
| unless they all want to relocate permanently to "some
| random African country that is in the middle of a civil
| war", they're going to have to deal with US regulations.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| It's not legally Facebook though.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| This is a global project, so it will be used in countries
| where this just isn't accurate.
| jiofih wrote:
| Like, for example? Micronesia?
|
| You may want to update your world view for the 21st
| century - there is no "wild west" left, every country
| where this matters will have financial regulations.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| It's simply wrong to state every country that "matters"
| has KYC/AML regulations similar to those required in the
| US.
| ExtraServings wrote:
| so again, which countries?
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Many, many countries don't have KYC/AML laws as strict as
| the US. If you want specifics, I encourage you to look
| into it.
| jiofih wrote:
| Countries like...? You must have a source or some
| knowledge backing that statement?
| yorwba wrote:
| > Who says the countries this will be used in have KYC/AML?
| The unbanked people this would be for aren't in countries
| that have those laws.
|
| You mean like Somalia? Even Somalia has KYC/AML laws:
| https://frc.gov.so/aml-cft-law/ (Customer due diligence is
| Art. 5)
|
| Are there any countries that _don 't_ have similar laws?
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| For further reading on what exactly they were trying to do in
| the first place: Libra Shrugged by David Gerard
|
| https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/libra/
| notahacker wrote:
| Even if those hurdles could be crossed, there's the hurdle of
| actually converting the unbanked to use their service. Unbanked
| people are unbanked because it's _not profitable for local
| banks to convert them to customers_ , generally because they
| live in cash economies and don't have very much of it, and
| WU/Moneygram or the hawala service is difficult to beat on the
| last mile of remittances. M-PESA filled some gaps because it
| used a existing network of mobile phone stores and people's
| confidence in the value of their dumbphone credit in local
| currency. All rely heavily on shops in villages to attract and
| serve customers.
|
| But Diem doesn't have any advantages over any of these
| entities: it's a foreign foundation with no local
| infrastructure to help people spend their cash and no local
| knowledge talking about immutable ledgers and cash equivalent
| reserves, as if the reason the unbanked were unbanked is
| because the local banks don't write whitepapers rather than
| because exchanging cash in developing world villages is a very
| expensive problem to solve relative to the size of the
| transactions they unbanked might like to make
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| I know it's a bit frowned up but just wanted to say this is a
| great comment.
|
| > as if the reason the unbanked were unbanked is because the
| local banks don't write whitepapers
|
| Made me chuckle.
| baby wrote:
| > and that excludes most unbanked people
|
| I don't agree, my step parents (in Romania) are unbanked and
| they have ID documents. A lot of people are in a similar
| situation there. Yet they all have smart phones.
| davidgerard wrote:
| The key to this is the part of the White Paper that notes
| they'll need to create a digital identity standard.
|
| This is something that's been widely advocated. But imagine a
| private company creating one, particularly one with Facebook's
| track record.
|
| Imagine having to use Facebook to access _any_ money - not just
| Diem Dollars.
|
| (my book on Facebook's Libra/Diem plan goes into this,
| particularly ch 8 on privacy)
| grishka wrote:
| > Imagine having to use Facebook to access any money - not
| just Diems.
|
| I don't think this can happen in practice. For any such
| system to work at all, the vast majority of the entire
| society needs to be using it and be satisfied with it, and
| then there'll always be cash anyway for which there can't be
| access control enforced by any one entity.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| 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.
| creddit wrote:
| Yup, FB is primarily attempting to subvert a fringe European
| political movement.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Well, I wouldn't put it past them, since they are quite anti-
| democratic in their nature.
| yunohn wrote:
| Maybe based on the phrase "per diem" [1]?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_diem
| pimlottc wrote:
| What is diem25?
| gravitas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Europe_Movement_2.
| ..
| sesuximo wrote:
| I thought of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem
| numair wrote:
| 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?
| fataliss wrote:
| What I don't get is why people all try to do their own when there
| is already a slew of existing solution and it hasn't gained
| adoption. Why not back something like Stellar if what you really
| care about is helping financial transactions!
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Interesting. They went from "Libra" (implying Freedom) to "Diem"
| (which sounds a lot like Die or Dying).
| davidgerard wrote:
| Their press release for the name change even called it "a new
| day for the project" - a Novi Diem, if you will.
| https://www.diem.com/en-us/updates/diem-association/
| Geee wrote:
| They probably did a search for short domain names, and went
| from there.
| geraldbauer wrote:
| From The Awesome Diem (formerly Libra) Page [1]:
|
| Diem stems from the famous latin phrase 'Carpe Diem'
| translating to 'Enjoy the present, make the most of today', a
| common mistranslation is 'Seize the Day' (via Wiktionary)
|
| Carpe is the second-person singular present active imperative
| of carpo "pick or pluck" used by Horace to mean "enjoy, seize,
| use, make use of". Diem is the accusative of dies "day". A more
| literal translation of carpe diem would thus be "pluck the day
| as it is ripe" - that is, enjoy the moment. It has been argued
| by various authors that this interpretation is closer to
| Horace's original meaning (via Carpe diem @ Wikipedia)
|
| [1]: https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-diem
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| Using the accusative case as nominative. Ugh.
| dest wrote:
| Nominative is "dies" which is not stellar as a brand in
| English.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| "Facebook dies" sounds pretty good to me.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Diem is known from "Carpe Diem", in English "Seize the Day".
| Hence Diem possibly means Day. I don't know why the name.
| Though, if you call it Noctum it has a negative/blackhat
| connotation, IMO.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Per Diem. It sounds a lot like per diem.
| wejick wrote:
| Diem is silent in Indonesian slang language
| obilgic wrote:
| > On December 1, 2020, the Libra Association was renamed to Diem
| Association.
| flyGuyOnTheSly wrote:
| Landing page looks almost exactly like the hundreds of other
| scamcoins I have researched over the past few years tbh.
| ffpip wrote:
| Wow. They really want to get away from the facebook brand. Zero
| mentions of Libra or facebook, despite the fact it was renamed
| only a few days ago. Not even in the FAQs.
| [deleted]
| sizt wrote:
| MONEY. MONEY. MONEY.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Article title at the time of this post, in case HN editors change
| it:
|
| > Diem - A rebrand of Facebook Libra
|
| Understanding who is behind this is extremely relevant.
| hobofan wrote:
| Pretty scary that there is almost no mention of Facebook on the
| website (only in the logo of Novi, the wallet app for Diem by
| Facebook).
|
| I'm wondering if all involvement in Diem at Facebook goes
| through Novi, and with that the members section is "truthful"
| (though still obfuscating the involvement), and/or if they will
| cherry-pick which companies appear on the list of members based
| on how good/bad their image is.
| obilgic wrote:
| It is not the original title. They have already modified it.
| Original title was:
|
| > Facebook Diem (Facebook's Libra has rebranded)
|
| https://i.imgur.com/nS9FaV5.png
| pimlottc wrote:
| Ah, thought I had caught it early enough, thanks for the
| correction.
| obilgic wrote:
| tbh this non-transparent editing of titles etc. is kind of
| distracting. It would be much better if they could leave a
| comment with the change they make.
| rozab wrote:
| Oh. That new title obfuscates the fact that Facebook is still
| behind this, imo, although the old wording was awkward
| swyx wrote:
| why so little trust of the HN mods?
| pimlottc wrote:
| Because official policy is to use the original title as
| written by the authors, which in this case doesn't mention
| Facebook at all.
| nixass wrote:
| Of course, some random african lady on the front page, look how
| progressive people behind Diem are
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| They claim to care about the "unbanked" so it's fitting surely?
| xwdv wrote:
| Tbh the image this projects is that Diem is not for me, or
| even anyone here.
| nannal wrote:
| I'm learning another cased language that isn't Latin, is Diem the
| right declension to use in this instance?
| presidentey wrote:
| FB's brand is suffering. They understand this themselves
| obviously. It's best to liberate new products from the word
| "facebook" and make it appear as a seperate entity. That's
| basically what this is.
| mromanuk wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. Whatsapp and Instagram are going in
| the opposite direction, they added Facebook in the Splash
| Screen.
| flixic wrote:
| That "unified" splash screen is menacing. A constant reminder
| that wherever you turn, it's a FB property.
|
| With Google/Apple/Microsoft it's quite straightforward,
| everything they make is clearly their style, their brand.
| This is not the case with Facebook's properties, they don't
| have a unified design language or branding. So adding a
| unified splash is a step in "marking it's territory", I just
| hate the feeling of that.
| [deleted]
| pferde wrote:
| So, are you basically saying that you feel uncomfortable
| having the ugly, naked truth made more obvious to you?
| flixic wrote:
| I think so, yes. It felt better to see Instagram at least
| visually untouched by the blue "f".
|
| Although, that splash has helped me reduce my usage of FB
| apps, so maybe that's a positive.
| another-dave wrote:
| Would disagree that it's obvious companies like "Beats by
| Dre" (Apple) or GitHub/LinkedIn (Microsoft) are
| subsidiaries from styling/branding
| eecks wrote:
| Or that Nest, Stadia, Waze is Google
| flixic wrote:
| Very fair points! I guess it primarily depends on whether
| the service was developed in-house or acquired. FB is all
| acquisitions.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think this is to make these products look more integrated
| with Facebook in the event of antitrust action. Same with
| unifying the messaging system.
|
| "Your honor, we can't possibly spin off Instagram, it's now
| part of the core Facebook product!"
| ourcat wrote:
| Interestingly too, I noticed the box for their Oculus Quests
| only subtly display the FB connection. And on the recent
| model, using a different/new 'thinner, all-caps' logo.
| joosters wrote:
| They're just rebranding to annoy author David Gerard, who
| recently published a great book "Libra Shrugged" looking into
| Libra and Facebook's bad ideas:
| https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/libra/
| bergstromm466 wrote:
| Banking is the lucrative and powerful form of rentier capitalism.
|
| Combined with the ability to mine user data for 'insights' and
| you've got the greatest panopticon.
|
| Hello corporate dystopia.
| Inhibit wrote:
| I'm not sure I feel empowered by any scheme where I'm the
| marketable product.
|
| Also, since they didn't bother to s/Libra/Diem that white paper
| is this just the same scheme with a different name? It's somewhat
| unclear.
| Traster wrote:
| 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.
| chillacy wrote:
| I suppose it's easier when you're smaller and you can just
| ignore regulations (Uber, Airbnb).
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| It is still Facebook, so nope. Actually, hell nope.
| flixic wrote:
| Libra was interesting. With their basket of currencies and easily
| programmable contracts, it was a semi-unique project in crypto
| space.
|
| Over the months, their ambition has been cut a lot by regulators.
| No more basket of currencies, now just US Dollar. At this point
| I'm not sure there's any benefit to it being on the blockchain
| either.
| joosters wrote:
| 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?
| baby wrote:
| What would you use instead?
| flixic wrote:
| 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.
| 1996 wrote:
| > 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.
| hobofan wrote:
| "Blockchain" in some sense can also be seen as a programming
| framework where you have a common set of functionality that
| people know how to work with and can gain a transferable
| skill set with. Similar to how MVC knowledge is to some
| degree transferable between Rails and Django.
|
| So in that regard I wouldn't immediately dismiss a usage of a
| blockchain as pointless. Given that PoA chains are usually
| pretty efficient, there also doesn't seem to be an immediate
| downside to it.
| joosters wrote:
| We normally call that an 'API', no chains of blocks
| required!
| hobofan wrote:
| An API would only be the _interface_, which just like
| with MVC isn't the same between a lot of different
| implementations of the same model and doesn't cover
| additional assumptions, like e.g. having a chain of
| blocks with a consensus mechanism to decide which chain
| of blocks to prefer over a diverging chain of blocks.
|
| If you want to argue for an alternative to a chain of
| blocks you could of course do that, but in my personal
| experience if you consider all the requirements (multi-
| party, auditable, etc.) the usual argument of "you could
| just use a normal centralized database" falls apart and
| you end up with something that in some form or another
| resembles a blockchain (or something equally complex), so
| why not use a blockchain?
| lukeschlather wrote:
| The standard definition of "blockchain" presumes that
| there is zero-trust between nodes and that anyone on the
| Internet can join the network. These properties are
| probably not what you want for most practical
| applications.
|
| For most practical applications a git repo where you have
| some set of trusted notaries and at least M of N notaries
| must sign each commit is probably closer to what you
| want. (Or something that is similar logically but still
| does not fit the standard definition of blockchain, which
| again is trustless.)
| hobofan wrote:
| I also prefer zero-trust blockchains, as they are more
| interesting ideologically and intellectually. I disagree
| however that the "standard" definition presumes zero-
| trust. In my opinion the only thing that is presumed is
| some form of consensus mechanism, which can also be a
| trusted one like PoA (proof of authority).
|
| > git repo where you have some set of trusted notaries
| and at least M of N notaries
|
| There isn't really much difference between a PoA
| blockchain and what you describe on a data structure
| level. The main differences here will be the mode of
| operation (active node vs. passive repository) and
| builtin support and optimizations for currency
| transactions.
|
| If you were really inclined, you could probably implement
| a optimized git client/server that could achieve that
| (and I wouldn't be surprised if someone has done that
| already). What's the point in doing so tough, if you
| could just as well use an existing implementation of a
| PoA blockchain?
| papito wrote:
| I would rather people learned the basics of RDBM's and
| concepts like "primary keys", "indexes". The kids these
| days depend on that stuff being hidden from them by
| CPU/disk speeds and ORMs. If they can't get the concepts of
| a technology they are most likely to encounter in their day
| jobs, what chance do they have with Blockchain, considering
| that it is _NOT_ a trivial thing.
| splintercell wrote:
| Completely different property rights enforcement
| (programmable and decentralized). Sure a theft may still have
| to be resolved via the courts, but it significantly reduces
| many overheads.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Thefts on the blockchain _can 't_ be resovled by the
| courts, that's the entire point. Billions of dollars worth
| of bitcoin, eth, and other coins have already been stolen
| through hacks of exchanges, fraudulent exchanges, and buggy
| smart contracts, and none of it can ever be returned
| because the transaction history is immutable and new
| transactions require digital signatures.
| papito wrote:
| 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, governments have been
| successful in tracing transections in investigations. That's
| how SilkRoad got got, and recently Japan did it as well.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| 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.
| obilgic wrote:
| > Libra was interesting. ..., it was a semi-unique project in
| crypto space.
|
| I think It was mostly interesting, because It had a potential
| of going real mainstream if FB really pushed it to it's
| millions of users that are not technical in one way or the
| other.
|
| Technically, there is so many ambitious projects going on in
| crypto space anyways.
| gjulianm wrote:
| > Over the months, their ambition has been cut a lot by
| regulators.
|
| I don't see how this is a surprise. Facebook basically wanted
| to take monetary sovereignty away from states and give control
| to private companies. What did they expect? Especially when
| right now people are noticing the reach Facebook has into our
| lives and how irresponsibly they're acting with it. Why would
| any sane person give Facebook any more control over their
| lives?
| x87678r wrote:
| The website still says "The Diem payment system will support
| single-currency stablecoins (e.g., [?]USD, [?]EUR, and [?]GBP)
| and a multi-currency coin ([?]XDM)."
|
| Is that no longer true? I'm not sure if the website is up to
| date.
|
| https://www.diem.com/en-us/vision/
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Libra was never interesting. A centralised fiat currency run by
| arguably one of the most unethical, unscrupulous, invasive
| surveillance capitalists in the world was never going to be
| interesting, at least not in any technical or socially useful
| sense. Adding the ever-popular "but blockchain" into the mix
| still didn't make it a real cryptocurrency, never will.
| Rebranding it changes nothing.
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(page generated 2020-12-06 23:00 UTC)