Someone should tell Joseph Lubin, the co-creator of Ethereum, that he needs to make up his mind about Libra.
Lubin: Libra Is a Good System
Seriously, in a new interview with CNBC, Lubin states that he likes Libra, but that Facebook isn’t the company who should be behind the wheel. This completely differs from an interview he gave in late October in which he describes the cryptocurrency as a “weapon of mass societal manipulation.”
In his latest discussion, Lubin explained:
I’m a big fan of projects like Libra. I don’t believe that Facebook… with the concerns that we have with respect to trust and personal identity in Facebook, should be driving that project.
He explained that while Libra has a lot of promise and can accomplish many good things in this era, the currency is likely to be held down by Facebook, and to an extent, the Ethereum co-founder has a point.
Facebook is a company that has been wrapped up in scandal for the past few years. Arguably the biggest scandal surrounding the social media platform has been Cambridge Analytica, which emerged in 2018. Facebook had been allegedly selling its customers’ private data to third parties for several years. What followed was a Senate hearing featuring Facebook’s own Mark Zuckerberg and trust in Facebook falling to all-time lows.
It appears many people haven’t gotten over their fear and mistrust of Facebook, with a new survey saying that less than three percent of Facebook users would utilize Libra if it ever came to fruition. As it stands, Facebook says that if the currency does not garner regulatory approval by the time it’s ready to go, the company will potentially leave the Libra Association.
This, according to Joseph Lubin, is exactly what needs to happen. He states:
My only hope for them to actually launch Libra was to launch it in a bunch of small and medium-sized nations and bide their time and eventually, launch it in European… and American nations that are resistant.
He further praised Libra’s status as a stable currency, saying that these coins will do wonders for the cryptocurrency space. He claims:
We’ll see many Libra-like projects going forward with different kinds of price-stable currencies offered.
Money Down the Drain?
As it stands, Facebook is in a very rough position. No doubt the company has put loads of money into the Libra project. The problem is that if its progress is halted – as it no doubt is now – a lot of time and energy will have ultimately gone into something that never comes to fruition, and there are rumors abound that Libra may never have an official debut.
At press time, however, the currency is still slated for release in 2020 at around the same time that bitcoin is set to incur a halving.
