Disruptive Technology And Thoughts!
By Rosemont International on Altcoin Academy
Fiat currencies (in old days pegged against gold) are, it would seem, at the verge of extinction (just like the dodo from my island) or if not, are about to witness reduced dependency.
Discussion and/or consultation are meant to happen “overtime” (definition of overtime yet to be known though) for the Fiat’s lesser importance in our daily lives subject to projects like Libra taking birth.
Libra, “tantôt” on and “tantôt” off can be considered as the new dictatorship by some and as the new solution to a rigid system by others. The pendulum swinging from one end to the other generally means disruption to all players of the economy so what can we expect of Libra’s effect on us and our lives? Facebook Libra as most of us tends to depict it is, in fact, a sort of a misnomer as in reality Facebook which initiated this is only one of the controlling parties via Calibra but not the sole controlling party. In fact, big boys like MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Uber, eBay, Vodafone and Mercy Corps are also founding members. Libra just like Bitcoin will have a decentralized ledger. The bubble around Libra is yet to peak but already many believe in its ultimate dominance by virtue of the fact that Libra will be backed by a basket of currencies (at least this is what has been announced) which in essence means that its value can be better tagged as opposed to other cryptocurrencies currently on the market.
And what about GDPR in all that? Should users who willingly share photos and who are feeding the system with confidential information be surprised at its potential or its actual exploitation? And algorithms or predictions of the future? Will the future be set in advance based on an algorithm and past trends and/or intention (many would recognize Minority Report!).
With a current potential of 2.41 billion users and a high penetration rate (if we were to take Facebook penetration statistics since the start), Libra can become the alternative to the traditional banking very quickly once and if launched. Hong Kong is meant to license 8 virtual bank licenses and conscious of this, an important international bank based in Hong Kong has already announced waiving its initial minimum deposit. This analogy depicts a situation where albeit with a higher risk exposure than what we are used to, authorities will be called to legislate on a potentially one-size-fits-all “decentralized system with no single authority” or leave things to adjust or to happen by themselves which will mean chaos. Do they/we have the choice? And interestingly, as of now, no big China player has yet joined Libra or attempted to compete with Libra.
Disruption is at your doorstep, what do we about it!
Article wrote by Neermal Poonie [ACIS (UK), MBA (UK), BSC (Hons), STEP and Blockchain Enthusiast] from Rosemont Mauritius
