Libra could be a booster to allowing people to use a cryptocurrency as a day to day element for their financial trades and transfers, presumably with ease of use, speed of TX and very low to null transaction fees. Their goal is likely to extend it’s use way further than the Facebook ecosystem, and the current (growing) list of integrands of the Libra Association seem to hint this, due to their diversity and areas of business. Currently, the Libra Association is integrated by (see
https://libra.org/en-US/white-paper/#introducing-libra):
• Payments: Mastercard, PayPal, PayU (Naspers’ fintech arm), Stripe, Visa
• Technology and marketplaces: Booking Holdings, eBay, Facebook/Calibra, Farfetch, Lyft, MercadoPago, Spotify AB, Uber Technologies, Inc.
• Telecommunications: Iliad, Vodafone Group
• Blockchain: Anchorage, Bison Trails, Coinbase, Inc., Xapo Holdings Limited
• Venture Capital: Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Initiatives, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Union Square Ventures
• Nonprofit and multilateral organizations, and academic institutions: Creative Destruction Lab, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women’s World Banking
All that whilst being a sort of stablecoin, although with some margin for fluctuation:
It is important to highlight that this means one Libra will not always be able to convert into the same amount of a given local currency (i.e., Libra is not a “peg” to a single currency). Rather, as the value of the underlying assets moves, the value of one Libra in any local currency may fluctuate.
Fine, there is all the centralization to it, the fact that it is linked to commercial entities (which makes one shiver considering how TX data may be used), the non-anonymity, etcetera. In a sense, it will (likely) beat Bitcoin to some of the goals it set out to meet, such as being an extended payment method. Bitcoin is still heavily a store of (speculative) value, and has many operational drawback to be widely used yet for day to day purchases.
Really, Libra is not anything like Bitcoin, but the use of a crypto in a potentially ample scenario could easily draw more interest of people to the cryosphere, perhaps rather more from the utility point of view than a speculative one, but there are common vessels.
Edit: Democrats (Maxine Waters) reacted swiftly to the announcement:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/18/18684268/facebook-libra-cryptocurrency-stop-congress-house-democrat-maxine-waters-regulation“With the announcement that it plans to create a cryptocurrency, Facebook is continuing its unchecked expansion and extending its reach into the lives of its users,” House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) said in a statement. “Given the company’s troubled past, I am requesting that Facebook agree to a moratorium on any movement forward on developing a cryptocurrency until Congress and regulators have the opportunity to examine these issues and take action.”
Looks like no explicit regulation -> no Libra.