Vodafone is the latest of a series of companies, which recently decided to withdraw from the project amid growing regulatory pressure from major central banks and many governments.
Most notably back in October Libra Association was also abandoned by Paypal, MasterCard, Visa and eBay after the European Central Bank, along with the Bank of England and the governments in Berlin and Paris warned that crypto currencies such as Libra pose a risk to the global financial system.
Companies that initially supported Libra started to leave the project. But, none of the companies provided details and recently, Mastercard’s CEO Ajay Banga became the first executive to explain his position.
He said it was mainly about regulatory compliance and Libra not enforcing KYC protocol.
How do you even manage KYC in places that don’t have traditional identity infrastructure. Think rural farmer in [enter a third or fourth world country]. Perhaps that’s part of what Libra wants to solve. If that’s the case, I understand MC leaving, but then wonder why not give it some time?
Shopify obviously has an interest in reducing fees for it’s merchants. So if Libra takes off, this could safe Shopify and it’s merchant a lot of money.
“We like to make decisions based on future potential instead of heard movement. Funnily enough this usually leads to us doing the opposite of the others" said the Shopify CEO.
Well, obviously he has high hopes for this deal, I think only time will tell whether it was the right decision.
Potential for saving money. That’s incentive enough. I’m still not sure why that wasn’t a good enough reason for some of the others that decided to leave.
So there has been an update on the situation with Libra - it’s getting redesigned to include multiple versions of the proposed stable coin, each backed by a single fiat currency like the Euro or the U.S. dollar because of the regulatory hurdles it’s facing.
So Libra coin to take a backseat and the Calibre digital wallet is delayed and possibly restricted to certain countries. They had a very ambitious plan. With Facebook involved, I still have to bet that the end product will provide value.
Doesn’t look like they’re going away. This is an interesting hire as CEO. Former financial intelligence secretary with the US Treasury and chief legal officer with HSBC. Looks like they’re getting ready to fight some more.
The most recent member of the Libra Association has become Blockchain Capital, a San Francisco based firm. The company has joined the other 28 members of the association as Facebook is heading the fight for a stablecoin launch.
Blockchain Capital was established in 2013 and has important stakes in other blockchain and cryptocurrency companies, which include BitGo, Ripple, and Coinbase.