Facebook will launch Libra in a greatly reduced form • The Bell • RIMA — Russian Independent Media Archive

Date

11/27/2020

Author

Сергей Смирнов

Source

The Bell

Preserved copy

Internet Archive

Translated material

Facebook will launch Libra in a greatly reduced form

The launch of the Facebook Libra cryptocurrency will take place in early 2021, but little remains of the previous grandiose plans for a new global currency: it will simply be a dollar token, writes the Financial Times.

According to the newspaper, the launch date will depend on the date of approval by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, but it is expected in January. The application was submitted back in May.

An electronic wallet for Libra, which is handled by Novi, a company spun off from Facebook, is already ready, the newspaper notes. But the territorial scope of the launch will be far from global: the cryptocurrency will be deployed gradually, primarily in the United States and Latin America. Other members of the alliance will be watching how the launch goes before building Libra support into their products.

How Libra Shrinked

Initially, Facebook wanted to make Libra the basis of its payment system, Mark Zuckerberg revealed the details of the project in June 2019. It was assumed that Libra transactions would take place on blockchain technology, but the cryptocurrency would be backed by a basket of currencies (which immediately removed conversion problems) and financial instruments, which was supposed to protect Libra from volatility.

27 companies have joined the project, including Visa, MasterCard and PayPal payment systems, as well as Uber, Lyft and Spotify services. to participate in Libra . Each firm paid Facebook $10 million

Facebook expected to launch the cryptocurrency in the first half of 2020, but problems with regulators who saw Libra as a threat to traditional currencies, a channel for money laundering and leakage of personal data could not be resolved. As a result, first PayPal, and then Visa, Mastercard and eBay refused to cooperate with the project.

In the summer, Libra decided to issue as tokens of several separate currencies, and the composite cryptocurrency was postponed for the future. Now it is decided to be limited to one dollar.