With Libra hitting the market soon, there has been a constant debate in the community whether or not Facebook’s crypto initiative will manifest as a cryptocurrency? Andreas Antonopoulos, the prominent crypto advocate was of the view that the question of Libra being crypto in itself was wrong.
During his talk in Edinburgh on ‘Libre Not Libra: Facebook’s Blockchain Project’, the Bitcoin proponent opined that Libra is a ‘corporal currency’ or the digital currency for the corporates. The entry of Libra gave rise to a three-body problem consisting of government’s money- Fiat, people’s currency- Cryptocurrencies, and corporates’ currency. He also noted that Facebook’s entry was just the beginning and it won’t be long before the rest of the FAANGs [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google] along with other corporates join in.
Even though the proponent and most of the crypto community thought that Amazon could be the one launching its crypto first, Facebook beat them to it. However, before the entry of the social media giant, there was friction between fiat and crypto and now, according to Antonopoulos, Libra might be like the meteor that hit the earth that is speculated to have made the dinosaurs extinct. He calls it a three-body problem where, Fiat is a well-settled planet, with crypto as an asteroid orbiting it and the corporate currency or the meteor that looks pretty from afar but could hit hard.
If the other corporates follow the pied piper then the user interest will not be the primary aim.
“I think that large corporations have a tendency to swallow innovation and rip out all of the disruptive things and spit out something that is neutered and profit making and exploits their users because that is their obligation. Their obligation is to the shareholders.”
