On the afternoon of June 18, the official website of Facebook's global digital cryptocurrency Libra was officially launched, and the Libra stablecoin white paper was also released. According to verifiable information, Facebook has been preparing for the currency issuance since 2017, and may even be earlier. During this period, media news surrounding Facebook’s currency issuance has been constant. As one of the largest social platforms in the world, Facebook has more than 2.7 billion users. It took two years to finally hand in the "answer sheet".
1. On schedule: What does the Facebook stablecoin white paper talk about?
Earlier news broke out that Facebook hopes to combine Libra, a stable currency, with its advertising business for user creation and sharing. At the same time, the stable currency can also be used for shopping, payment, credit card repayment, and salary payment. Waiting for behavior... To put it bluntly, it is to use Facebook and its social application platform to carry out mobile payment business, similar to our current mobile payment platforms such as WeChat Pay and Alipay; but the fundamental difference is that our WeChat, Alipay The transfer is paid in legal currency, while the Facebook transfer is paid in the digital currency (stable currency) it issued.
Below, we briefly sort out the content of the white paper for everyone, and get a glimpse of the "dry goods" in the white paper:
In terms of vision, Facebook mentioned in the white paper that the main purpose of releasing Libra is to break a series of problems in existing financial services and establish a simple, borderless currency and financial services for billions of people. infrastructure. In other words, Libra's goal is to establish a "borderless currency". Unlike the current lack of supervision of blockchain projects, Facebook hopes to work with the financial sector (including regulators and experts in various industries) to ensure the sustainability, security and credibility of this stablecoin system within the regulatory framework. …
In terms of its own currency storage and reserves, Facebook's white paper states that Libra is fully backed by real asset reserves. For each newly created Libra cryptocurrency, there is a basket of bank deposits and short-term government bonds of corresponding value in the Libra reserve, in order to build people's trust in its intrinsic value, and the interest on the reserve assets will be used to pay for the system. costs, ensure low transaction fees, and distribute dividends to investors in the early stages of ecosystem startup.
In terms of technology, Facebook's stablecoin Libra currency is built on the basis of the "Libra blockchain". The software of the Libra blockchain is open source and anyone can develop on this basis. The Libra blockchain mainly uses the Move programming language, uses the Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) consensus mechanism, adopts and iteratively improves the widely adopted blockchain data structure... These technologies can ensure that the system Security, to prevent the occurrence of problems such as double payment. The Libra blockchain follows the principle of anonymity, allowing users to hold one or more addresses unrelated to their real identity.
In terms of teams, Libra's stable currency is issued by an organization called the Libra Association (Libra Association). Previously, according to participants familiar with the project, institutions and companies that want to join the Libra blockchain need to pay Facebook a membership fee of US$10 million, and then they can run nodes on this blockchain to obtain data viewing and access. Data writing authority, currently there are 28 announced partners, and the number will increase to 100 in the future.
2. Short Carnival: Why was it stopped as soon as it was released?
On the second day after Facebook released the white paper, that is, today, the media said that the United States and France expressed doubts, and Facebook’s currency issuance plan was recommended by the US House of Representatives to stop.
A leading member of the U.S. House of Representatives has called on Facebook Inc to stop developing its new cryptocurrency and has asked company executives to testify before Congress. House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Waters said: "Facebook should suspend development of the Libra product until Congress and regulators can review the matter." She said in a statement: "Facebook owns the data of billions of people. Disregard for conservation and careful use of this data has been demonstrated time and again."
According to the U.S. House of Representatives, the reason for stopping Facebook’s currency issuance is mainly due to concerns about Facebook’s data security. After all, Facebook’s user base is too large, and Facebook has been involved in data leakage scandals before. But is this really the case? Let's take a look at what Facebook's coin issuance means, or what kind of impact it has.
According to Facebook Libra's vision, Libra has the characteristics of a global currency, which can break through national borders and be used for cross-border transfers and cross-border payments. We might as well imagine that Facebook, as one of the largest social giants in the world, has 2.7 billion users, and these users are all over the world. If 2.7 billion users from all over the world accept Facebook Libra in the future, Facebook will become the central bank of the country where these 2.7 billion people live in a few years. When the number of users is large enough, Facebook will not only be able to obtain a huge franchise fee And handling fees, and even penetrate into the economies of various countries, which in turn has an impact on the sovereignty of various countries.
Some people may say that Facebook is an American company! If it can really infiltrate the economies of various countries, wouldn't it make the dollar hegemony more stable? No! completely opposite! The reason why the United States hastily stopped it is because it has just threatened the hegemony of the dollar.
Why do you say that? Because the Libra Network is not registered in the United States at all, but in Switzerland, and Facebook Libra is different from the old stable currency USDT. USDT is anchored to the US dollar, while Facebook Libra is anchored to "a basket of bank deposits and short-term government bonds". The scope of the "basket" is large, it may be the Japanese yen, it may be the US dollar, it may be the euro... So there is a view that: Facebook is not willing to be a pawn of the US finance, but wants to be in the existing In addition to China's "dollar hegemony", there is another chess game.
As Jason Brown, co-founder and CEO of Tally, an automated debt repayment and financial savings app, puts it: “Libra is a real threat to the governments that issue money, the banks that store it, and the actual remittance networks. People may It’s not yet understood how disruptive it will be if it does succeed.”
4. The future direction: it is a mule or a horse, and you have to take it out
The Libra blockchain network is scheduled to be officially released in the first half of 2020.
1. In the next few months, the association will collect community feedback on the Libra blockchain prototype;
2. The Libra Association will build well-documented APIs and libraries;
3. The Libra Association will use an open source approach to create a framework for the collaborative technology development behind the Libra Blockchain.
4. The association will perform extensive testing of the blockchain;
5. The association will work hard to promote the development of the Move language;
6. The association will work with the community to overcome technical difficulties on the way to a permissionless ecosystem.
