The Facebook co-founder, at last, has broken his silence on the eagerly awaited stablecoin Libra.
Speaking to Japanese newspaper Nikkei Zuckerberg said:
“A lot of people have had questions and concerns, and we’re committed to making sure that we work through all of those before moving forward. Obviously we want to move forward at some point soon [and] not have this take many years to roll out. But right now I’m really focused on making sure that we do this well.”
There has been some major concerns over Libra in Europe and the Facebook CEO said:
“All these concerns around libra are serious. So I want to say this with a lot of clarity: In these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of libra on European soil.”
The Libra co-creator David Marcus was also present and said:
“Libra is designed to be a better payment network and system running on top of existing currencies, and delivering meaningful value to consumers all around the world. Libra will be backed 1:1 by a basket of strong currencies. This means that for any unit of Libra to exist, there must be the equivalent value in its reserve. As such there’s no new money creation, which will strictly remain the province of sovereign Nations.”
Zuckerberg clearly feels Libra will be more efficient and wants to be sensible about the project. Times have changed since he started Facebook, his company has lots of power and users now. This means he needs to be responsible, He concluded the interview by saying:
“Part of the approach and how we’ve changed is that now when we do things that are going to be very sensitive for society, we want to have a period where we can go out and talk about them and consult with people and get feedback and work through the issues before rolling them out. And that’s a very different approach than what we might have taken five years ago. But I think it’s the right way for us to do this at the scale that we operate in.”
This was a rare interview and its not very often we hear from the man himself. One thing to take away from the interview is the fact that Facebook will press ahead with the launch despite the condemnation from the US government and EU officials. Libra is doing everything to appease the concerns of governments worldwide but something tells me that they never will. Libra is expected to launch in 2020 and will be backed by a basket of currencies from the major economic nations barring China. Facebook’s Libra has the potential to disrupt central banks and governments worldwide even if that is not their aim. The Cambridge Analytica scandal took lots of trust away from the company but it seems the company have learned from past mistakes and will address concerns with maturity.
Share
