For the longest time, executives of Libra have stated that users can expect a release date of 2020 for the coin. However, 2020 has finally arrived, and the project doesn’t look any closer to coming to fruition than it did roughly one year ago.
Libra Could Be Delayed
The currency – first introduced in June of 2019 – has experienced its fair share of hard blows over the past seven months. For one thing, many people don’t trust the currency after all the dirt that’s gone down with Facebook, most notably Cambridge Analytica in 2018.
It was discovered that the social media conglomerate and parent company of the Libra project had been selling users’ private data to third parties for advertising purposes. The company faced a great deal of scandal following this news, with head Mark Zuckerberg having to testify before all of America on national television and the company being handed a $5 billion penalty for its actions. Trust in Facebook fell to record lows after that.
Libra is apparently an attempt to garner this trust back. The problem is that it involves everyone’s financial information, which is amongst the most private data held by everyday users. The notion that a company as potentially shady and dark as Facebook could get its hands on your private financial stats is a little scary to most people, and if it failed to protect their private data before, who’s to say it won’t have trouble in this regard again?
Either way, people seem a little slow to jump onto the Libra bandwagon. On top of that, it has also faced several regulatory hurdles from lawmakers both at home and abroad, and this has caused several delays – including additional testimonies from both Mark Zuckerberg and Libra head David Marcus – to the project. While a 2020 release was the original goal, there’s no way to know if the company will remain on track.
Nils Reimelt of Capco Digital – a company that offers financial consulting services in Switzerland – explained in an interview:
As long as the [Securities and Exchange Commission] SEC is concerned about Libra, saying it’s based on relatively new and unproven technology and could rival the U.S. dollar, other governments including the Swiss one will take a wait and see approach.
The Time Has Come, but No Progress Has Been Made
The bottom line is that many nations – including the United States – don’t quite understand how to approach Libra. Is a security or a commodity? Is a stable currency like the company says, or is it just another standard token that should be chalked up on the board with the likes of bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC)?
Nobody quite understands because there are still too many regulatory questions surrounding it, and until these questions can be answered, one can expect the financial space to remain as is.
