The Libra Association has garnered a new addition to its family in the form of Checkout.com.
Libra Is Growing Again
The company announced last Tuesday that it would step aboard the Libra Association and serve as a governing member. In the future, Checkout.com will serve as one of the Libra leaders and help the organization assert governing regulations for how the currency can be used and what it can be used on.
In a statement, the company announced:
The Libra project holds the promise of increasing financial inclusion for billions of unbanked people.
Since first emerging in January of last year, the Libra project has claimed that its big goal has been to bring people together under the banner of a single cryptocurrency which could be used through Facebook and help people in developing nations and abroad gain access to services and goods through cryptocurrency.
The coin has been something of a controversial figure for the past year considering Facebook – a company long enveloped in scandal – first brought it to the public’s attention. It’s probably safe to say that the social media giant’s reputation has never quite been the same following the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018. The company was caught selling private user data to third parties for advertising purposes, and people have never really trusted it since.
That’s why when Libra came about, the idea of sharing one’s financial information with a company like Facebook has struck many people as odd, disturbing, and downright scary. While Libra has worked hard to put some of those fears to rest, many regulators still have concerns regarding how the coin platform is looking to protect people and keep them safe from money laundering, financial fraud and other potential threats.
Some of these hardcore regulatory tactics have gotten in the way of Libra moving forward. Both Mark Zuckerberg and David Marcus – the man in charge of Facebook’s blockchain department – have been required to give testimony before Senate committees, while several founding members of the Libra Association – including PayPal – have left their positions with the project, claiming regulation is too up in the air for the time being.
Can the Project Recover?
In addition, Libra has recently had to scale back on many of its plans given the coronavirus pandemic that has taken control of the globe’s financial infrastructure. Initially, Libra was designed to be a single coin backed by a package of stable currencies, including USD, the yen, and the euro.
However, now that people need quick and easy access to finance like never before, Libra has announced that it will not be a single coin but an entire basket of standard fiat and stable currencies that people can use to gain access to the items and products they need for everyday survival.
