Meta's Ill-Fated Cryptocurrency May Be Close To Dissolving 39
Diem, Meta's ill-fated cryptocurrency previously known as Libra, may never actually materialize. According to Bloomberg, the Diem Association is reportedly "weighing a sale of its assets as a way to return capital to its investor members." Engadget reports: It's unclear what assets the Diem Association owns, but the report notes the group is talking to bankers about selling its intellectual property and finding "a new home for the engineers that developed the technology." If a sale were to happen, it would seem to be the final nail in the coffin for Diem, the cryptocurrency project that Mark Zuckerberg has championed. Plans to get the stablecoin off the ground have stalled for years amid regulatory pushback and lawmaker concerns. After first launching as Libra, several high-profile partners pulled out in 2019.
Last fall, Facebook started a small pilot of Novi, the cryptocurrency wallet formerly known as Calibra. But the fact that Novi was forced to launch without support for Diem -- it used a different stablecoin called the Pax Dollar -- was a sign that Diem's future remained uncertain. Longtime Facebook exec David Marcus, who oversaw the social network's crypto plans, said at the time that Facebook remained committed to Diem. "I do want to be clear that our support for Diem hasn't changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live," he wrote. Marcus announced a month later that he was leaving Facebook.
Last fall, Facebook started a small pilot of Novi, the cryptocurrency wallet formerly known as Calibra. But the fact that Novi was forced to launch without support for Diem -- it used a different stablecoin called the Pax Dollar -- was a sign that Diem's future remained uncertain. Longtime Facebook exec David Marcus, who oversaw the social network's crypto plans, said at the time that Facebook remained committed to Diem. "I do want to be clear that our support for Diem hasn't changed and we intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live," he wrote. Marcus announced a month later that he was leaving Facebook.
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Yeah, because THAT'S the problem in the world that needs to be solved. Credit cards.
sigh
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It's one of many problems in the world, but it is a problem. Just look at the recent stand-off here in the UK between Amazon and Visa over Visa's charges.
Suggesting that bringing bringing Facebook/Meta into the space is a "solution", however, I'm not so sure about.
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It's one of many problems in the world, but it is a problem. Just look at the recent stand-off here in the UK between Amazon and Visa over Visa's charges.
So... part of the problem was already solved by the marketplace? How is that a bad thing?
Re: Shame (Score:3)
Well if only the most important problem in the world (by media vote) is allowed to be solved any more then pretty soon we will all be starving. Which would certainly solve excessive carbon emissions.
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Well if only the most important problem in the world (by media vote)
What is the most important problem in the world by media vote?
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Your sarcasm doesn't necessarily reflect your correctness.
One can't do anything on this continent at this period in history without money except possibly walk the earth or grow carrots.
And even then, you're going to need money for a lawyer when you get arrested.
But this will change, eventually. Always does.
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If only there were a way to make payments between individuals that was difficult to follow and did not require third party approval of every transaction /s.
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If only we leveraged our presently available technology to eliminate (artificial) scarcity of goods, creating planet-wide abundance for the 1st time in human history and moving the very concept of "money" (cash, credit, BTC, whatever) out of the central position in everyone's lives. /!s
Re: Shame (Score:2)
There just being a way isn't good enough, it needs uptake. Normal crypto is fine for gambling, but the number of users willing to use it for transactions is minimal. Zelle is seeing some uptake but isn't far behind paypal for blocking accounts willy nilly.
Diem would likely have had uptake through Meta pushing Novi.
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I think he was referring to "cash."
Although in places that aren't the US lots of people just use electronic debit systems.
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Re: Shame (Score:1)
Facebook wouldn't even have owned or had special access to Diem data. The exchanges would have all the sensitive data.
The merits of Diem never mattered of course, Trump Derangement Syndrome killed it from the start for most people. After Cambridge Analytica everyone rationalizes knee jerking against anything related to Facebook, even here.
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There's "Follow Us on Facebook" at the top of /. fercristssake. Seriously? For geeks??
Has anyone actually verified that the js in that code isn't doing anything untoward?
Bc there's already plenty of evidence that fb is "a nice boy, but 1 or 2 pixels short of ethical."
(With apologies to Sen. F. Leghorn.)
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Isn't that a slur for a woman of ill-reputed in Vietnamese?
It's a Vietnamese name [wikipedia.org]- It's just "day" in Latin.
Re:(con) Diem (Score:4, Interesting)
You're failing to realise that tones are important in Viet. I can't use Unicode here, so I'll have to use VIQR and TELEX representations. That guy's name is Ngo^ Ddi`nh Die^.m (VIQR) or Ngoo Ddinhf Dieemj (TELEX). The consonant at the beginning of the word "Diem" sounds like the English "y" (Saigon dialect) or English "z" (Hanoi dialect) and it has the glottalised falling tone. The GP is thinking of "con ddie^'m" (VIQR) or "con ddieems" (TELEX), which does in fact mean whore - in this case, the consonant at the beginning of "diem" sounds like the English "d" and it has the high rising tone.
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You're failing to realise that tones are important in Viet. I can't use Unicode here, so I'll have to use VIQR and TELEX representations. That guy's name is Ngo^ Ddi`nh Die^.m (VIQR) or Ngoo Ddinhf Dieemj (TELEX). The consonant at the beginning of the word "Diem" sounds like the English "y" (Saigon dialect) or English "z" (Hanoi dialect) and it has the glottalised falling tone. The GP is thinking of "con ddie^'m" (VIQR) or "con ddieems" (TELEX), which does in fact mean whore - in this case, the consonant at the beginning of "diem" sounds like the English "d" and it has the high rising tone.
Thanks, I've learned something new today :)
Who knew.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Who knew.... (Score:2)
Crypto bubble wasn't really relevant to Diem, they weren't trying to get people to buy it as a speculative investment. At most they could have made some money investing the reserve in short term securities.
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In Europe, the money has to be held in a ringfenced bank account, and interest rates are basically 0%. So the business model would be much the same as Paypal, they make the money from transaction fees.
Re: Who knew.... (Score:2)
Can buy Tether on European exchanges just fine.
Re: Who knew.... (Score:2)
Diem wasn't incorporated in Europe either.
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I thought it was incorporated in Switzerland? While Switzerland is not part of the EU, their financial services laws are pretty similar to EU laws.
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Crypto is weird, in that it's a bubble that keeps blowing up and bursting every year. Yes, most of the cryptocurrencies dropped in value by about 50% recently. That said, they did the same thing last year and recovered their losses within 3 months.
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returns all the money? (Score:1)
Assets? (Score:3)
"Assets"
I like this. Even a drowning vapourware crypto has... "assets" to flog off.
Trying to beat WeChat Pay? (Score:3)
I guess they are trying to replicate the success of WeChat pay, but they did it without blockchains, and Paypal already has that market sewn up in the West.
Imagine that! (Score:2)
Nobody wants ZuckBux.
Copied (Score:1)
Should've called them Facebucks. (Score:1)