Vodafone quits Facebook's Libra currency:
Vodafone has become the latest company to leave Facebook's digital currency project, Libra.
The Libra Association has seen an exodus of backers including Paypal and Mastercard amid regulatory scrutiny.
Facebook announced in June last year that it would launch the digital currency in partnership with other members of the association. But the project quickly ran into trouble with sceptical regulators around the world.
In October, the world's biggest economies warned cryptocurrencies such as Libra pose a risk to the global financial system.
"Vodafone Group has decided to withdraw from the Libra Association," a Vodafone spokesperson said. "We have said from the outset that Vodafone's desire is to make a genuine contribution to extending financial inclusion." "We remain fully committed to that goal and feel we can make the most contribution by focusing our efforts on [mobile payments platform] M-Pesa."
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by EvilSS on Friday January 24 2020, @02:53PM (7 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @03:37PM (1 child)
It never even made sense. They were going to peg it to the US dollar but back it with a basket of currencies. When asked by congress how the peg would work when the value of non-usd currencies backing it fluctuated, Zuckerberg said the economists were still in disagreement about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @03:59PM
Can't believe they wasted their time by asking him about a scheme that is either a fraud or destined to failure. Let the criminal justice system handle it.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @04:10PM (4 children)
No, most users of digital currency are that, but the biggest users by any meaningful measure are like 2 central exchanges because the idea has no actual merit and falls right back into central banking, but unregulated
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @07:36PM (3 children)
It was the greatest idea of the last decade, the people that recognized it as such have already become very wealthy for doing so. But it is not over.
If the governments of the world could not agree to a currency weighting scheme for SDRs, they won't be able to agree on a UN-coin or gov-coin either. So when the USD hegemony ends (which must happen as the US debt grows exponentially) it will default back to precious metals or something like bitcoin which distributed in the fairest way possible (voluntary buy in).
Good luck!
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @08:00PM (2 children)
Luck is for people betting on dumb ICOs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @09:16PM (1 child)
Bitcoin didn't have an ICO.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @10:03PM
Yes.