Editor's Note: This article comes fromBabbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc), Author: Helen, published with permission.

Editor's Note: This article comes from

Babbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc)

Babbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc)

, Author: Helen, published with permission.

Bitcoin has been around for ten years. Although it has received widespread regulatory attention, no country believes that it will shake the status of its own legal currency and give it the legal status of "encrypted assets" with peace of mind. Correspondingly, Libra, the white paper was launched only 3 months ago, and it is still in the stage of "talking on paper", which has already forced the entire monetary and financial world to be extremely tense, as if it is facing a big enemy.

In terms of positioning, both Bitcoin and Libra have the lofty ideal of "world currency". In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto defined Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system in a white paper. In 2019, Libra's white paper stated that Libra's mission is to build a simple, borderless currency and a financial infrastructure that serves billions of people."In terms of market value, Bitcoin is currently worth 185.3 billion US dollars, surpassing the national currencies of South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Australia, and becoming the 11th largest currency in the world. And Facebook behind Libra has 2.7 billion cross-border users, which means that as long as each user holds $100 on average, the volume can exceed Bitcoin."

But the attitudes of central banks towards Bitcoin and Libra are quite different.

In contrast to Libra's attitude, Christine Lagarde, who was just nominated as the chairman of the European Central Bank, said: "Anything that uses distributed ledger technology, whether it is called encryption, assets or currencies, they are shaking the entire system. ’” Yves Mersch, a member of the ECB’s executive board, also said:

Libra could weaken the ECB's grip on the euro, by affecting the liquidity position of euro zone banks.

If there is a contempt chain in the currency circle, it is probably the exact opposite, it should be Bitcoin>altcoin>platform currency>stable currency. Fundamentalist believers usually believe that Bitcoin is a realistic reflection of Hayek's idea of ​​"denationalization of currency", a successful experiment after the unremitting efforts of cypherpunks, and a great innovation in the history of currency for a century. Libra, on the other hand, is the least innovative stablecoin among digital currencies. The only bright spot is that its initiator is the social giant Facebook.

Since the two parties hold their own opinions, the point of view is not important, but the perspective behind it is what we need to think about. As a reporter in the blockchain industry, the author hopes to jump out of Lushan Mountain and stand on the standpoint of the central banks of various countries to see what their standards are.

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Is it a broad means of payment?

In the following years, Bitcoin has been expanding the payment scene. According to Coinmap data, as of July this year, more than 15,000 platforms worldwide accept Bitcoin. In September of this year, even Burger King, the world's second largest restaurant chain in Germany, announced that it would accept bitcoin payments. Obviously bitcoin can be used for payment, but not many people are really willing to pay with bitcoin these days.

At the Libra hearing, Senator Chris Van Hollen expressed his views on BTC: "BTC's volatility makes it actually not widely used, but Libra may be widely used." Director of the Central Bank Digital Currency Research Institute Mu Changchun also said bluntly in the course: "Excessive fluctuation of currency value has always been the main problem faced by encrypted assets, limiting their influence to their small circle. Libra's intention is obvious, it hopes to attract more People use it, not just investors with a high appetite for risk.”

Another cliche issue is performance. The scalability of the blockchain is relatively poor, and its performance is not only determined by computing power, but also by bandwidth. The architecture of the distributed ledger makes it limited by the node with the lowest processing power, which also brings about storage problems. Mu Changchun said: "Libra does not use pure blockchain technology, but a hybrid architecture, so it cannot be regarded as a blockchain cryptocurrency in the strict sense. It is precisely because of this that it may become a real blockchain. payment instrument."

The 10-minute confirmation speed of Bitcoin has been widely criticized. With the development of technology, there are also many public chains claiming to achieve tens of thousands of TPS/s performance. In contrast, Mu Changchun revealed that the central bank once ran the Libra code and found that its best performance was 30,000 TPS/s, although this is still not good enough for the currency used for payment. But this makes Bitcoin not considered a competitor to fiat currencies from the perspective of central bank officials, while Libra has such a possibility.

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Could it be better regulated?

France is one of the countries that has vocally opposed Libra, saying it poses a huge threat to monetary sovereignty and urging the European Union (EU) to introduce a related ban. French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire said fiercely: "I want to ensure that Facebook's Libra project will not become a sovereign currency that can compete with national currencies. Because I will never accept companies as private kingdoms."

Even so, they still have no way to say that Libra is illegal, and whether it can be supervised is another question. Federal Reserve Chairman Powell said: "There is no single institution that can stand up and oversee this. We don't have the authority to apply the privacy rules that apply to banks to Facebook or Libra." He also said: "In our current regulatory system, obviously What we need simply doesn't exist."

The summary of the meeting of the G7 finance ministers and central bank governors composed of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy and Canada also mentioned: "The G7 finance ministers and central bank governors acknowledged that although innovation in the financial field can bring to bring substantial benefits, but may also bring risks. Therefore, they agreed that the stable currency and other various new products currently under development, including projects such as Libra with global coverage and systemic nature, would lead to serious regulatory and systemic, and broader policy issues that need to be addressed before such projects can be implemented."

There is no way for national regulation to stop Libra. They cannot simply characterize it as illegal like Bitcoin. Because Libra plays the banner of inclusive finance and actively embraces compliance, this forces regulators to take the initiative to give a legal path. Because of this, the central banks of various countries can only express their views frequently, hoping that everyone can maintain a consistent cautious attitude and prevent its launch.

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Will it shake up the financial system?

Looking at the supervision of Bitcoin by various governments in recent years, it is mainly divided into three dimensions. One is ICO and exchanges, which are mainly to prevent financial risks and protect investors; Supervision; the third is the taxation of individuals, institutions and mines that hold and trade Bitcoin.

In contrast to Libra, regulatory concerns overlap and derive: one is concerns about sovereign currencies. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said: “In the long run we need to change the rules of the game. When change comes, it shouldn’t be about replacing one monetary hegemony with another.”