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Libra Coin — Why you Cannot Trust to do the Right Thing
It’s only been two years since Facebook heard about Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, such as the world’s most widely used social media platforms. Our personal data is explicitly used or sold by Facebook. I think we all know that now. The Cambridge Analytica fiasco made this clear.
Do we still want to trust Libra Coin?
Let us briefly recall the scandal:
“The Cambridge Analytica scandal is suddenly a major problem for Facebook.
On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into how Cambridge Analytica, ostensibly a voter-profiling company, accessed data about 50 million Facebook users, according to The Wall Street Journal. It’s not alone: The GOP-controlled Senate Commerce Committee demanded answers from Facebook on Monday, as did Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon.
The social giant’s stock has also lost about 12 percent of its value since The New York Times and The Guardian broke the first stories about the scandal over the weekend.””
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Facebook, speaks to third-party developers in April 2017.Stephen Lam / Reuters
Many articles about Libra Coin have been published on this platform. So I just want to talk briefly about this coin:
After two years of speculation, Facebook has finally unveiled “Libra,” a cryptocurrency that it says will empower billions of users around the world by giving them access to financial services, while providing an easy to use form of digital cash for everyone else.
As has been rumored during the past few months, the network will be built on the Libra Blockchain, which will support the Libra — a stablecoin whose day-to-day value is engineered to be relatively flat and not volatile like other cryptocurrencies.
The stablecoin’s value is pegged to a group of low-volatility national currencies including the US dollar, the Japanese yen, and the euro.
Libra is not decentralised nor censorship resistant. Libra is not a cryptocurrency. Libra will destroy all stablecoins.
So why does Mark Z. want to use blockchain technology? There can be many reasons for this. First of all, if you fall behind the technology, you are very likely to disappear in the conjuncture today. Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp have millions of users all over the world. With the exception of Whatsapp, the other 2 platforms offer some kind of shopping. Advertisements, market places, publishers and customers. It is clear that there is a monetary trade.
But there are some problems with this being sustainable. Except for the Americas and Europe, the money may not be taken out for many reasons. Due to many obstacles, especially in Asia, South Africa and the Middle East, money exchanges cannot take place at the desired pace and speed.
MZ wants to avoid this first. In this way, the exchange of money on all platforms, without any restrictions, can be done quickly. Since the money paid through the companies will be made with Libra Coin, it will be fully traceable and controllable.
What exactly does that mean? Facebook, which previously used all our personal data without our permission, will be able to keep records of our monetary transactions. In this way, our personal data can be monitored in monetary terms.
MZ will now be able to monitor not only our information in our social media accounts, but also our spending habits. Did these remind you of 1984?
Here is the argument they use:
Many of Facebook’s users reside in places with low financial services penetration. Imagine a world where a Filipina helper can purchase goods sold in Europe with Libra. She most likely does not have great banking services where she works as an overseas foreign worker. Therefore, purchasing goods from foreign countries over the internet is difficult. With Libra, there is no issue.
Here is the fact:
Blockchain technology is not a new technology. We’ve been living with this for 10 years. But adaptation continues to progress, albeit slowly. We may not be at the stage we want to with regards to payments and use in daily life.
But MZ presents it as something new. This is nothing new, but when we think of the biggest companies in the world, MZ is the one who has taken the most serious step in this.
Although it sounds good as an argument, although MZ’s courage is appreciated, all previous scandals cast a shadow on Libra Coin’s name.
CONCLUSION
So what I want to say is that a person who steals and sells all of our personal data cannot speak of liberty or decentralization.
You won’t need Libra Coin to survive. As you can use Linux instead of Windows to use computers.
Libra Coin can succeed. We may even thank it for creating a bullish effect on the cryptocurrencies market, but we should never trust it.
SOURCES
- https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/the-cambridge-analytica-scandal-in-three-paragraphs/556046/
- https://decrypt.co/7502/facebook-libra-coin-cryptocurrency-launch-calibra
- https://blog.bitmex.com/libra-zuck-me-gently/
Libra Coin — Why you should not trust was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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