The Libra Association officially starts. Some give up, others ask for admission

Libra Association, which is to guide development directions cryptocurrency branded by Facebook, it was formally constituted. Even before it was launched, some companies gave up their membership, but there are a lot of others waiting to be seized, which can be extremely large.

To put it mildly: the recent months have not been a success story for the Libra project. Two weeks ago, we informed that the world's leading companies that were supposed to build the power of the cryptocurrency signed by Facebook - Libra - have more and more doubts whether to support the project. Visa, Mastercard and PayPal were considering whether to continue their work in the association and - so far - have not joined it. Seven of the 28 planned to start members withdrew from participation before signing the agreement.

Earlier, objections to the project were raised by representatives of central banks and politicians - especially in the US - who fear that the new cryptocurrency may shake not only the power of the dollar, but the entire American economy. So the representatives of the largest companies began to be very careful not to step on the footprints not only of regulators and continue to successfully run their basic businesses.

The Libra Association is already active

Despite these troubles, an agreement establishing the Libra Association has just been signed in Swiss Geneva. It will be responsible for launching the new cryptocurrency, which according to the assumptions is to revolutionize the global payment system.

The founding act was signed, among others, by representatives of the following companies: Facebook, Coinbase, Uber, PayU, Spotify, Vodafone, Xapo, Anchorage, Bison Trails, Andreessen Horowitz, Farfetch, Illiad, Ribbit Capital, Kiva, Lyft or Mercy Corps.

A formal board of directors has also been established. This body currently has five members. They are: David Marcus - managing Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary, responsible for the financial side of the project; Katie Haun - Partner at Andreesen Horowitz, Wences Cesares - Managing Xapo, Patric Ellis - Chief Legal Officer at PayU and Matthew Davie - Chief Strategy Officer at Kiva.

Queue of volunteers at the door of Libra

Ultimately, the association is to have 100 members, and one might start to fear that this number will be difficult to achieve. Were it not for the information that the representatives of the Libra Association had made public two days ago. It turns out that over 1,5 thousand people want to join the project. entities. After thorough verification, it turned out that 180 of them meet the strict membership criteria. New companies, however, will be accepted slowly and carefully - always after obtaining the consent of 2/3 of all existing members.

The association will make key decisions regarding the creation, operation and development of the new digital currency. Libra is to be linked to a basket of currencies (US dollar - 50  percent, euro - 18 percent, yen - 14 percent, British pound - 11 percent. and the Singapore dollar - 7 percent), and members of the association will earn interest on it based on a new token - Libra Investment Token.

Who's afraid of Libra Coin?

Facebook's crypto project got loud before work began on it for good. Nothing unusual. Due to the range and number of users, the new cryptocurrency can quickly reach a huge audience. And this is the plan, because according to leaks its support is to be provided, among others, by the Massenger application.

However, it quickly turned out that not only good points had a lot of interest. After critical voices from American senators, Visa and Mastercard withdrew from the project. The giants in the transfer of payments were informally threatened with increased controls, and this was enough to cool their enthusiasm to participate in the new project.

In a week's time, at the American Congress, the financial commission will interrogate founder and Facebook boss Marek Zuckerberg. Certainly questions will be asked about Libra's impact on the financial market, but also more broadly on the entire US economy.

David Marcus, project leader, ensures that  Libra is still open to full cooperation with regulatory authorities. At every turn, he also emphasizes that his ambition is not to take the place of the American dollar in the global economy.