Thoughts about Libra
How Libra could be a gift to the world, or a curse.
Acknowledgement :
This article is an attempt to share my thoughts about Libra after reading the white paper and some other articles .
This article is targeting the people who have at least a basic understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrencies .
What is Libra?
As mentioned in the white pepper : “ Libra is a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people.” Its built on Libra Blockchain and backed by a reserve of real assets. The main purpose of Libra as mentioned on white paper is to serve millions of unbanked consumers .
There is a debate in the crypt space about considering Libra as a cryptocurrency or not but to help you settle down this debate we can say , It depends, if you think that any token with digital cryptography is a cryptocurrency , then yes Libra is a cryptocurrency . But if you think that it must be open, borderless, neutral censorship resistant & public in order to consider it as a cryptocurrency, Libra is not a cryptocurrency
Libra ecosystem :
- Libra Association has three macro level functions: Governance; Management of the Reserve, Management of [Libra Core].
- Libra Core : the software implementation of the libra protocol
- CaLibra : the wallet that consumers use developed by Facebook
Libra network is a permissioned consortium blockchain. It allows you to develop your app but all the transaction must be validated by certain nodes “ the association members “.
Why there are lots of clamors about Libra?
Giving that the us dollar is the most powerful currency in the world, I don’t think US Congress would welcome Libra existence as it threatens not only the US dollar but also all the other government currencies because it targets to reserve real assets and produce a global coin for millions of unbanked consumers who are already using Facebook daily and Facebook knows every detail about them more than their mothers do.
“wow, we’re here, it’s happening”, Andreas M. Antonopoulos
I think we are witnessing the generation of new area which need different types of regulations .The old school bank won’t have the right to accept or reject, but in order to survive they have to open their minds and accept the change and of course compromise it.
As a technical I’m extremely happy but as a human I’m terrified :
There is no doubt that Libra as a technology will accelerate the blockchain interest and adoption . Involving the Facebook tech team which is a big number of smart people around the world means that the number of great minds in the blockchain space will increase & the number of awesome ideas will increase as well. Libra has came to tell the world , who was against bitcoin and blockchain , hey those people were right and if we couldn’t be with them at the past , we have to be now and as soon as possible.
But on the other hand, as a human I’m terrified , I only see Libra as a fascism. The potential danger from Libra side is really big , this association is going to control millions of people’s money. they can have control over governments themselves keeping in mind that the most dictatorship governments don’t know about you 10% of Facebook already know now.
We have nothing to do with Libra now as consumers. It has not been launched yet and is still in development, they only published the white paper. Soon we will see what they could do and what they couldn’t and of course we are going to learn a lot form Libra and all other project. I believe that all the things that are happening now is just a chain in our civilization chains.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of the Ethereum Foundation.
