Replies to post #26902 on Bitcoin (BTCUSD)

[Investors3]

Facebook Is So Serious About the Metaverse It Paid a South Dakota Bank $60M for the Meta Name
Facebook paying top dollar for a small bank's Meta trademarks show how assertive it will be in its attempt to stake a claim in the metaverse.
By Jeff John Roberts
3 min read
Dec 20, 2021

In brief

* Facebook spent $60M to buy "Meta" trademarks from a South Dakota bank.

* The deal is unusual because the bank doesn't have any associations with
the metaverse.

How big are Facebook's ambitions for the metaverse? So big that the social media giant recently paid a South Dakota bank $60 million just to acquire the trademark rights associated with its Meta Financial name.

Both companies last week confirmed to Reuters that Facebook (which rebranded to Meta in October) used a shell company called Beige Key LLC to acquire the trademark rights.

The deal is notable for its size: while $60 million may not sound like much to a company with a $928 billion market cap, it is a huge sum in the trademark world. It's also notable for what it could allow Facebook to do.

Owning a trademark gives the owner extra leverage when it comes to stopping competitors from using specific words, phrases, or logos. That leverage, however, doesn't extend to stopping someone from using the same name for a related product; that's why Apple computers, Apple Records and Apple Autoglass can all co-exist.

In a typical trademark deal, a purchaser pays to acquire not only a name but the goodwill that customers associate with a certain product or service. In the case of Meta Financial, its goodwill comes from its regional banks in South Dakota and Iowa and online payment products that the bank says promote financial inclusion. While Facebook has dabbled in payments through its crypto wallet Novi, Meta Financial's operations have very little to do with Facebook's traditional social media businesses or the metaverse where Facebook is so eager to plant a flag.

This suggests the $60 million deal could serve as a power play by Facebook to chase others away from using the terms "meta" or "metaverse." Alexandra Roberts, a trademark law professor at the University of New Hampshire, suggested as much on Twitter:

is fb taking over this whole co.? sounds like no. is it just paying co. to change names so new meta can acquire the broadest rights possible? sounds like more than that. but new meta getting priority based on old meta's earliest use is sketchy, esp if fb isn't in that space yet.

— alexandra j. roberts (@lexlanham) December 18, 2021

If Facebook uses its new trademark to bring legal pressure on other companies, it would heighten the already-growing tension over who gets to own the metaverse. While CEO Mark Zuckerberg has put the term at the core of his company's rebranding, the broader crypto community has shot back that the metaverse is meant to be a decentralized, permissionless sphere that no one should own.

Facebook's approach has already come under scrutiny after it appeared to snatch the @metaverse handle from an artist on Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) without explanation. The company subsequently returned the handle amid media controversy.

Facebook, however, is hardly the only company trying to stake its claim in the fast-evolving metaverse. A number of brands, including Pepsi and Budweiser, have been buying up Ethereum handles, NFTs or digital real estate—often with cringe-inducing results.

Crypto giant Coinbase is also staking out a position to be the go-to service for helping its customers manage the NFTs and avatars that many people will use to identify themselves in the metaverse. While the company's CEO Brian Armstrong has long been a vocal advocate of decentralization, Coinbase could end up exerting an outsize role in the metaverse if its identity plans come to fruition.

The bottom line is that it's very early days in determining who, if anyone, will control the metaverse, but giant companies from the current internet era—particularly Facebook—are willing to spend, and possibly to bully, in order to get in early.

https://decrypt.co/88742/facebook-metaverse-trademark

[Investors3]

BITCOIN DESIGN GUIDE V2 LAUNCHES WITH FOCUS ON LIGHTNING
The Bitcoin Design Community will discuss the project’s second version in a Twitter space on Wednesday.
NAMCIOS 1 HOUR AGO

The Bitcoin Design Community launched the second version of the Bitcoin Design Guide, an open resource aimed at helping product designers and developers build more user-focused Bitcoin applications, according to a statement sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

The guide’s first version, launched last year in June, brought together principles for non-custodial Bitcoin products and provided demonstrations and techniques for helping users self-custody their bitcoin.

Now, the second version spins the guide’s focus onto the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s layer-2 scaling solution for faster and cheaper payments, in an attempt to help developers and designers build mobile-first, non-custodial lightning wallets with the best possible user experience in mind.

“Today, Lightning is advanced. However, most users may begin their bitcoin journey with a Lightning wallet in the future,” the statement said. “Lightning will cater to this majority with faster settlement speed, lower fees, and more user-friendly payment formats than on-chain. Version 2 of the Guide focuses on building these types of non-custodial Lightning products that people will come to rely on in the future.”

The Bitcoin Design Community, an open group of over 2,400 product designers, developers, and creatives that started as a Spiral initiative in the summer of 2020 to solve bitcoin design challenges, will host a Twitter space on Wednesday to discuss the launch of the Bitcoin Design Guide’s new version.

Version 2 isn’t the guide’s last iteration, as the Design Community is expected to continue to both maintain and update it, according to the statement. However, future updates will most likely be smaller, more focused revisions that improve specific areas. They may include improvements in product focus sections, better navigation in the guide’s structure, and greater accessibility for bitcoin wallets to cater to a broader set of users, the statement said.

The Design Community is always open to new contributors who want to help improve the Bitcoin user experience. Those interested in helping with the project can learn more about how to get involved on the Bitcoin Design website.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-design-guide-v2-launches-with-focus-on-lightning