Facebook’s Libra ambitions to enable seamless transfer of cash and digitizing the financial world in its unique fashion were met with skepticism and scrutiny from the political class and regulators around the world.
Although several high-profile members left amid scrutiny; the company didn’t give up.
It scaled down the project to cool down scrutiny and has once again scaled down, according to a new report from the Financial Times.
FT reports that the Facebook-led Libra cryptocurrency will be launched as early as January next year.
The Libra Association, backed by 27 members, including Shopify, announced less ambitious plans in April. It planned to launch several stable coins backed by different fiat currencies and another digital composite of the digital coins. At the time, the Libra Association planned to launch the project this year.
But in a more limited fashion, Libra Association will only launch one initial coin backed one-for-one by the US dollar. Later, the team plans to roll out additional coins.
There is no solid launch date yet, for now.
The association is waiting for the green light from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, Switzerland’s regulator. But if approved, the Libra Association could launch its first digital coin in January.
Facebook has faced immense scrutiny over Libra with central banks, politicians and regulators seeing it as a threat to the monetary system’s stability — and a way to seize control.
Scrutiny lead multiple co-founding members PayPal, Mastercard, Vodafone, eBay, Visa, Stripe and others to exit.
The Libra Association has since scaled down its ambitions in a move to abide by concerns of regulators around the world.
The latest report shows the Libra Association is even taking more baby steps to get the project off the ground.
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