Facebook’s Crypto Project Libra Continue to Lose Allies
After PayPal’s exit from the Libra Association, companies like eBay, Stripe, Mastercard, and VISA soon followed.
Aptly named Libra to signify balance scales and justice, this group of select Big Tech companies, some even competitors, mixed with some VCs and NGOs will be voting on how the project will scale (remember that most, if not all, cryptocurrency projects face scalability problems and Libra will not be exempted from this). Think of them as a board of directors.
Similar to how Bitcoin that has “miners”, the Libra Association will also power the network of “validators” that will ideally ensure the accuracy and trustworthiness of transactions. As time goes by, they plan to have even more members join in with the aspiration of eventually becoming fully decentralized (see An Introduction to Libra, the white paper).
Ironically, just ‘cos of continued hostility from different governments and regulators, members who are part of the payments sector are actually the first to go.
Honestly, I think they hopped on Zuckerberg’s boat because they wanted to be cool but jumped ship as soon as the tides got rough. Shame on them, really. They will be the first sector to be disrupted anyway if ever this projects gains traction.
I guess there’s a lesson here in having such a strong keynote ala Steve Jobs launch and bragging about how you got some of the world’s biggest competing tech companies to forget about their differences and back your vision.
I mean, there’re so many projects out there that seek to build a smart-contract programmable stablecoin similar to Libra, even Telegram is working on one (but was recently blocked by the US SEC).
I think the winner here will be whoever gets the most users without raising too many red flags with governments, much how like Uber or Airbnb had a user base already when regulators began to question their existence.
A local bank here in the Philippines, Unionbank, even launched its own stablecoin with alleged smart-contract capability. No legislator or regulator is really bothering them about it. Maybe because our regulators are clueless and also because, just as I’ve said, they’re working on it quietly and not raising too many red flags.
I know crypto purists will say “Libra is not a real blockchain!” and even though I’d agree, I think what Zuckerberg is doing is great for the space and the vision to eventually be fully decentralized as stated on their white paper is beautiful and at the very least will incrementally take power away from central banks and middlemen and give them back to the people.
