Facebook’s much anticipated cryptocurrency, Project Libra, has attracted investments from some of the top tech companies in the world, in a sign that the project could be every bit as revolutionary for the cryptocurrency ecosystem as suggested. But what has the crypto world made of what we know so far?
Big Money Comes In
Despite no concrete details having come directly from Facebook in relation to the coin, speculation has nevertheless risen dramatically in the past week or so, with a list of investors having been revealed, including PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Uber, and Stripe. Suggestions are that they have invested around $10 million each to the project, which will take the form of a stablecoin backed by a basket of balanced fiat currencies. The imminent arrival of Facebook’s token has started a debate on social media, with various crypto luminaries chipping in with their opinions:
I’m just gonna say it.
I think the “FacebookCoin” is an attempt by big tech, banks and credit card companies to lure people away from #Bitcoin into their “better, easier, crypto”, which is nothing more than a fiat coin being masqueraded as crypto.
Millions will be fooled.
— Charlie Shrem (@CharlieShrem) June 14, 2019
“more ppl will turn to bitcoin for one simple reason—bitcoin is scarce, while Facebook’s coin isn’t. People will migrate over time to the most honest ledger for storing hard-earned wealth—and that’s not fiat currencies or derivatives thereof” @CaitlinLong_ https://t.co/VY4X8yRvkc
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) June 10, 2019
New entrants to crypto start with Bitcoin.
The largest, most well known, first decentralized cryptocurrency is the onramp for nearly every other cryptoasset.
Globalcoin (@facebook coin) might change that by bringing more new entrants to Bitcoin than any other coin in history.
— Luke Martin (@VentureCoinist) June 6, 2019
A Threat to Bitcoin?
Opinion is clearly divided on the subject, which is to be surprised when there is so little to go on and the company at hand is a monolithic data hoarder stepping into a world with privacy at its core. It is thought that the token will work with a delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism like EOS, with 100 validator nodes initially created. Suggestions are that each node will cost $10 million to run, meaning that some of those big investors may well end up being validators themselves, although the rewards of doing so are not yet known. Among the discussion is the question of whether Facebook’s coin presents a threat to Bitcoin, with some arguing that it can do what Bitcoin tried to do but quicker and cheaper (and with Facebook tracking your every purchase and transfer), while others have a much more simple take:
Facebook coin isn’t a competitor to Bitcoin, it’s a competitor to the Dollar.
— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) June 9, 2019
Whatever we find out when Facebook finally lets the genie out of the bottle, it will be sure to stir debate all the way until launch day…whenever that might be.
