Is Libra Harbinger of Dystopian Future? Here’s What Experts Say

01.03.2020

Ubiquitous and private corporate money. Isn’t it a scary concept, no matter where you lean on the political spectrum? The very phenomenon of Libra is somewhat underrated in the media, but it is possible that the ramifications of Libra going live will exceed our expectations.

We continue talking to people within the industry about Libra.

The Libra Future Is in 1984

“The power of Libra lies in the user base of Facebook, in the comfort that it could provide, just like the WeChat users in China. The Facebook users will be stripped naked, they will be put in a very dangerous place in exchange for comfort.

“My fear is that despite the initial scare from the governments, eventually, they will understand that Facebook will provide much more information and much better ways to manipulate the country, to organize what people want, think and say. And that’s where the governments will start to appreciate that tool and support it.”

Alena Vranova, Head of Strategy and BD at Casa

You’re No Consumer, You’re Product

“If you’re not getting charged, then you are the product. They are making money from you just by advertising or collecting information about you. They are able to extract value from it. Bitcoin is not a company trying to make money out of being privacy-invasive, it’s a peer-to-peer currency that doesn’t have any company running it.”

Adam Back, Blockstream CEO

Privacy Is Dead

“I don’t think they want to [protect users’ financial privacy]. That’s not in their purview necessarily. Governments are going to try to make them do it, but that’s not their main concern. Facebook doesn’t care about privacy.”

Jimmy Song, Bitcoin Core developer

Big Brother Is Paying You

“Though they’ll say “it’s a consortium of 100 companies”, we all know that Facebook is the primary developer. And Facebook is one of the biggest information collectors and analyzers and basically resellers, who are trying to understand everything about your life in order to capture more of your attention, more of your time, more of your money.

“The logic follows that if they also know all the information about your financial life, then they can get a much more complete picture of who you are, what you do. And then what’s going to happen with that if that information gets abused, misused, sent to various government authorities or other entities that may want to attack or censor you for any number of reasons?”

Jameson Lopp, Casa CTO

Watch the full video on the ForkLog Live YouTube channel.

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Tags: cryptocurrencies, Facebook, Libra