Libra’s support for other anonymous wallets has risen to national security issues.
Libra is behind a maddening, both Libra’s own risk and Facebook’s original sin. Over the years, Facebook has also inevitably embarked on the path of Internet winners, and the brave from Dragon Slayer will eventually become a dragon, trying to become a maker of the rules of the game. And repeatedly touch people’s sensitive nerves in terms of privacy, user data, inappropriate content, and even intervening in presidential elections.
After all, what is the amount of social data that Facebook has, and what financial resources can they get with Libra? With artificial intelligence, what can they predict? This has brought fear and anxiety around the world.
Libra: I am too difficult
Just a week before the hearing, Paypal, Visa, Stripe, eBay, Mercado Pago, Mastercard, Booking Holdings and other payment circles have “retraced”, and the Libra Association’s original 28 giants are left. The next 21 (excluding Facebook), equivalent to Libra’s payment-related partners, were destroyed, and the advantage of the previously advertised cross-border payment was put a bit embarrassing.
(Image courtesy of websfavourites.com, copyright belongs to the author)
When the circle is around, people can’t help but ask, what is the practical significance of Libra and these big institutions? Indeed, the ultra-luxury lineup will allow Libra to increase acceptance and liquidity in a short period of time, but the purpose of these companies to form alliances for their interests is also obvious. It may not really see the prospects and potential of Libra. The result is to make the outside world clearer. As you see, the regulatory risks Libra faces are bigger than the so-called vision.
In the same week, the G7 released a stable currency report that Libra should not be launched until the supervision is complete, and the G20 also made a decision not to allow Facebook to release Libra.
It’s cool when it’s not hot.
In the past four months, people have barely felt any positive progress in Libra, and struggle in the mud of regulation has become the biggest attraction.
(Picture From VCG, copyright belongs to the author)
In addition to the control of the stable currency that anchors sovereign assets, other doubts have been uninterrupted. Because Libra can make cross-border payments, how to ensure privacy without subverting the global financial system, such as anti-terrorism, anti-money laundering, and taxation, is unknown.
Subsequently, questions at the national level also came out. Both France and Germany have clearly expressed their boycott on the grounds that “any private stable currency can’t obtain the power of money, because this right is born in a sovereign state.” For a time, the international opposition to the issuance of Libra was soaring.
Whether Libra can enter the sovereign state balance sheet in the future will be a hard indicator of its financial status. However, how many sovereign countries may be willing to take the initiative to open the back door? Most likely, Libra is the currency of circulation in countries where the national currency is relatively weak in the world. Currently, it is most likely to be a small country in Africa and South America, and this may also become a new “currency hegemony” and “currency colonization policy.” “.
The paradox is that third-world countries like Africa and South America have how to achieve the strict KYC (know-your-customer, also called “due diligence”) required by anti-money laundering. )? In places where it can be done, it is more convenient for people to get banking services, but not where they can’t. After all, to use Libra, you must first buy Libra. So the question is, can Libra really help the bottom population without bank accounts, or continue to expand the gap between the rich and the poor in the world?
Questioning the original sin of Facebook behind Libra
Countries around the world are currently scrambling to research and launch their own digital currency, but few countries will allow a big technology company to assume such a role.
(Image courtesy of CNN, copyright belongs to author)
So, on October 20th, Facebook loosened and was willing to link Libra to the national currency, rather than the comprehensive currency designed at the outset, no longer controlled by a single company.
But outsiders are questioning Libra, in fact more from Facebook’s profit model and management.
Facebook itself is almost monopolized in the social networking field, with an annual profit of at least $10 billion per year, but the precise advertising model has a single profit model, which makes it necessary to dig into user privacy endlessly and need to guide users to contribute more privacy. Make his way.
Cambridge scandals in recent years, allowing developers to access a large amount of personal information, revealing user data, and even intervening in the presidential election, “Tonggemen”, and finally Zuckerberg became a “red man” “A large “apology” was completed under the indiscriminate bombardment of lawmakers.
The reason for reaching out to the financial industry is also interpreted as Facebook’s search for new breakthroughs before the growth of a single profit model is widely constrained. And this original sin is inevitably projected on Libra.
Although Facebook claims that Libra will not get the user’s data, it will not be disclosed to third parties. But with KYC in the process, it is already difficult to achieve true privacy. And such a huge amount of data is concentrated in the hands of a company, Zuckerberg’s monopoly on data is more serious than Rockefeller’s monopoly on oil, which not only changes political influence, but also interferes with democratic decision-making.
After all, the credibility of cryptocurrency decentralization lies in “we have no ability to get it”, right and wrong “we don’t take the initiative to get it.”
Where is Libra’s future?
For Facebook to take Libra’s tricks, there are very different opinions in the industry. There are four possibilities for Libra to survive:
1. Become a national regulatory target, both from the perspective of financial stability and from the perspective of protecting investors;
2. Become a legal currency dependency, subordinate to this system, solve potential money laundering, terrorist financing and market monopoly issues, and withdraw from competition with the central bank;
3. Evolved into a quasi-dollarStabilize the currency, join the digital offshore dollar system, exist as a dollar trader, and have a global banking role;
4. Libra is decoupled from a basket of mortgage assets, just like the dollar decoupling gold, forming a new credit currency.
(Picture From Economist, copyright belongs to the author)
Based on today’s hearings, Libra has been designed to be a vassal of sovereign currency. Whether it is wearing a vest or taking off a vest, there is a great chance that it will not evade sovereign regulation.
And behind Libra, Facebook is gradually showing its ambition to rule the world with data. It is no longer just the beginning of changing the world with links.
Before, the digital currency was excluded from the mainstream social order. If the sovereign countries were strangling together, there is still the possibility that the magic box will be closed, but after Libra, the digital currency is an inevitable trend. It’s just how it exists.
As Patrick McHenry, vice chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said Zuckerberg’s testimony today
Not only for Facebook, but for an answer to the entire digital age.