This week has been a very eventful one and mainly because Facebook released the whitepaper for its new digital currency, Libra. The whitepaper release has drawn attention all over the world as Facebook is one of the biggest organizations in the world with over 2 billion users globally.
Not all of the attention has been friendly though. The event has also raised suspicion and questions about what Libra is meant to achieve. Regulators have been asking questions and went as far as ordering that Libra be stopped. This, according to some important members of the crypto community is a sign that Libra will be going through a lot of regulatory hurdles.
While this may be bad for Facebook, the CEO of eToro Yoni Assia says the regulatory pressure Libra encounters will only help to push the adoption of Bitcoin. He said regulators will continue pushing to regulate Libra, but Bitcoin will benefit from such efforts and cannot be regulated.
Regulators can and will try to regulate #Libra, but the stronger the push to create constraints on it, the further they will advance #bitcoin adoption which can’t be regulated https://t.co/3lMS9gvw31
— Yoni Assia (@yoniassia) June 21, 2019
Libra was described as a blockchain project in the whitepaper but cryptocurrency experts have cast doubts on the possibility of such claims. It has also been described as a centralized project that does not give users the liberty to participate in the governance of the ecosystem, neither do they handle their own keys. This means users do not have the liberty to control what happens to their funds as the saying goes “not your keys, not your money”, according to crypto experts.
Interestingly, even though the cryptocurrency community does not believe in the validity of Libra, it does believe that it will bring mass adoption as Facebook’s over 2 billion users will potentially be introduced to cryptocurrency through the project. It is however not a competition against gold, they say.
According to Bitcoin bull Max Keiser, Libra will only compete against the U.S Dollar and other fiat currencies as it is almost a fiat currency, just that it is digital. He says Libra cannot even compete against gold so it is only a medium of attracting attention to Bitcoin and advancing its adoption in the mainstream sectors. Bitcoin proponents argue that the world will see the superiority of Bitcoin and rush to it once they compare it with Facebook’s new Libra.
Bitcoin has been pumping since the launch of Libra whitepaper 3 days ago and is approaching a major milestone in its history by hitting $10,000. Could the launch be responsible so far?
