Facebook’s Libra — Cryptocurrency or Big Brother?
Another feather in Zuckerberg’s cap . . . something else?
Is Facebook’s new digital currency, Libra — hubris, or part of Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to take over the world? Or is it a little bit of both.
As of August of 2018, the number of existing cryptocurrencies was over 1600 and growing. As of December of the same year, “crypto’s” had a market capitalization of 100 billion dollars, with bitcoin being the predominant player.
As of March 31, 2019 there are 2.4 billion monthly active users of Facebook. The company continues to grow at a rate of 8% of users, year after year.
If you just look at those two data sets alone, one could see why Zuckerberg wanted to create his own currency.
Libra is similar to bitcoin in that it will use the same blockchain structure.However, Libra will be what is called a “stablecoin”. In other words, it will be pegged to a basket of currencies. But exactly which national currencies are in that basket, and which are out, and how it is all weighted is currently unknown. As of this writing, we know three of the currencies are the US dollar, the Euro and the Yen, and that Libra will have a value of about one US dollar. Keep in mind that even a pegged currency can fluctuate.
