Libra Aiming To Launch In January

The Libra Association – based in Geneva, Switzerland and made up of 27 members – is expecting approval from Swiss financial authorities to launch their stablecoin project.

Backed By Facebook

Although the Libra Association is made up of 27 members, the most notorious member of the group is none other than Facebook – who revealed the project last year.

According to the Financial Times, The new stablecoin digital token Libra will be backed by the US Dollar and hopes to better the world of payments. It’s also reasonable to assume it will become a widely used payment option for advertisements run on Facebook, as well as Instagram.

Other noteworthy members of the Libra Association such as Visa have since ditched the project.

The Facebook-backed digital currency was meant to do more than it probably will when it launches, as financial regulators – especially those of European Union member states raised concerns about a stablecoin backed by one of the world’s largest corporations.

Fearing that Libra could erode financial stability across the globe, a torrent of backlash forced Facebook and its associates to scale back the project to its tentative current form.

Bruno Le Maire – the French Finance Minister – is one of the principal detractors of the project, arguing that Facebook has such a far-reaching influence all over the globe that allowing the cryptocurrency to be traded in the European Union would have serious consequences.

“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.”

It remains to be seen if Libra will now be allowed to launch within the European Union and worldwide in its scaled-back form. Even if it is, it will now have to compete with CBDCs being tentatively developed In China, Australia, the USA, and elsewhere.