If you mean they will try to move away from USD (or other national currencies), there is absolutely zero incentive for them to do so. And how will they pay their wholesalers, vendors, employees, taxes?
If they allow that with USD et al, they're more liable in more "currently on the books" ways than if they started letting people send Ama-coin across the globe.
And that was when the FTC wasn't chaired by Lisa Khan.
In contrast, "use this coin to buy anything on Amazon" is a massive product from the second it launches.
They are owned by someone who doesn't understand how one thing can be "good" without another thing in the same category being "bad".
Among a few.
There is widespread manipulation in the crypo market. The difference with crypto is that there are no regulations that even attempt to hinder it.
https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-join-a-crypto-pump-and-dum...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/lbzdn7/scam...
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-of-a-pump-and-du...
> Unpredictable issuance.
Perhaps in theory, but USD has proven to be a far less volatile store of value than Bitcoin and Etherium, which have both been through the equivalent of hyperinflation and hyperdeflation over the past decade.
> Subject to censorship.
Currency is not subject to censorship, such a thing would be impossible. Certain payment providers have refused to process payments to various individuals, but such a thing would be possible in the crypto space as well.
USD is a horrible value storage in the last year's if you deal outside of USD
If by less volatile you mean gradually losing value, I mean yeah.. But is that a better store of value?
> such a thing would be possible in the crypto space as well.
Nope, that is literally impossible with Bitcoin. Hitler could open up a shop, and no one could stop him from receiving payments.
- Other payment systems like PayPal/Venmo/Zelle are for P2P domestic use only - you can't send money cross-borders.
- Paypal/Venmo requires you to have a bank account. Diem doesn't, and so part of Diem's mission is to serve the un-banked.
- This is a little pedantic, but PayPal/Venmo/Zelle/Square Cash are closed ecosystems. You can't send money from one to the other, for example. Diem is a protocol that you can interact with using any wallet, not just Novi.
Not being paid to post this or anything. I just think Diem is not well advertised haha
I think the problem with Diem is not that it doesn't fill a market role, it's that the target market, in general, knows how evil Facebook is, and would prefer a "cleaner" alternative. The problem with doing dodgey stuff with user data for years and years is that you gain a reputation, and then even if a small subset of your massive super organization makes a really good pure product, that product still inherits the stench from the parent. We don't trust the Zuck, and until fairly recently the target market for Diem were almost entirely people tech savvy enough to understand the depths to which Facebook operates in.
Imagine if Google came out with a new crypto-coin, and with all the soul and creativity a bloated bureaucracy can muster, called it "GCoin", a "New way to shop and get tracked!". Now, many normal people would stay away from GCoin purely because they know it would be in the GGraveyard in two years, but the rest of the target market would think," Ya know, Google has been absolutely evil this last decade or so, building their business model around surveiling us and toying with our emotions to get us to buy useless shit, while slowly trading away any uniqueness they ever had for fun primary marketing colors in a thousand different patterns. I think I'll pass on this GCoin bullshit...". That's how we feel about Diem. Except possibly not quite as angry, because at least Facebook has given us a figurehead to hate, instead of the faceless, souless, primary colored evil that is Google.
But I’m genuinely curious, why is this a massive product for anything more than a weird form of money laundering?
I still don't see a big upside for Amazon, but merchants wouldn't need to accept it. And of course, Amazon could incentivize merchants to use it. Maybe if you take it, you get 1% more value than if you take USD and spend it on the site/AWS.
If they send me 101 Bezobucks instead, I'm happy because they gave me $101 of value; they're happy because for that $101 purchase, they got $100 value; if I paid with a rewards credit card, they would probably get $98-$99.
Why it would need to be a cryptocoin thing instead of just a gift card/credit, I don't know. Cryptocoins are hot for reasons that don't resonate with me. Maybe some way around gift card laws, and if they can back into foreign remittances without needing a money transmital license, it could be useful.
Imagine if the dollar fluctuated widely (say because of inflation) but BezosBucks does not. Your buying power stays the same (while BezosBucks becomes more expensive to buy into over time).
I doubt sellers would say no to a sale if a client offered to purchase it with a blockchain store card.
Now think about a currency that's used internally and slowly it gets released by the company and used by all. By the time people started fighting against it it would be too late to stop.
You really think facebook employees using it internally would mean other people would accept it too?
I don’t see anything going good, PR wise, with those three in one team
It makes 0 sense only if you assume that they will hodl the coins, which makes no sense if you're using it exclusively to settle a transaction.
You don't need to be expose to the crypto volatility to accept it as a payment method, in fact I don't see any risk involved as long as you find a way to immediately convert your crypto to the fiat currency of your choice.
Like a stable coin?
idk why you think it needs to come down to this, like its a big stance. They sell stuff. They will take whatever form of payment you want to accomplish this just like multiple fiat currencies are accepted by companies. If they accepted bitcoin it would be a casual add on of a payment type.
Which by definition would be centralised, and so wouldn't need a blockchain at all?
So what? They don't have to keep it in Bitcoin.
It makes lots of sense as they would safe millions on fees if done right.
> Amazon is perfectly positioned to create its own virtual coin
They could, and there's even a big change they would. We've seen big companies do dumb stuff. e.g. FB Libra project.
Maybe elsewhere tho…like South America or Africa
So what? They are big enough to create the correct incentives to change that.
Everyone will benefit, but specially them.
Argentina has had over 30% inflation EACH YEAR for many years in a row, for instance
They are actually at the forefront of adoption of The Lightning Network.
If you dollar cost average Bitcoin, it has outperformed the usd and will very likely continue to do so in the future.
The executive team at the time was made visibly uncomfortable by the idea while it was being presented. They expressed concern over the process involved in handling fraud and essentially said the business model didn't support a Bitcoin-based payments system. They even had the nerve to inquire about how accepting payments in Bitcoin benefits the customer.
Needless to say, the team did not win. In fact, my team did - but we probably shouldn't have.
Then the Amazon Coin [0] came out later that year, which to this day very few people actually are aware even exists.
As an active international company, Amazon is perfectly positioned to create its own virtual coin. They've created their own transportation service since what is available did not meet their needs. Likewise, the credit card companies take a big chunk of their profits and don't meet all their needs. It's only a matter of time before they go after them. I bet they're making plans to create it and use it for internal transactions aiming for it to be used by all the shoppers. Eventually it will be convertible to any currency and Bitcoin will be one of them. This is the power of being big and getting bigger.
This is a multi year project but it's coming.