Banks Excited About Libra, Crypto's Exec Says 13

Banks Excited About Libra, Crypto’s Exec Says

Libra May Sign on Banks… 

On Monday, the Libra Association — the somewhat decentralized body governing the Libra blockchain and crypto asset — finally ratified its charter.

In a press release published on Monday night, the Libra Association confirmed the 21 member companies — seven less than the initial 28 mentioned in initial documentation — that signed the charter.

These companies are as follows: Anchorage, Andreessen Horowitz, Bison Trails Co., Breakthrough Initiatives, Calibra (Facebook’s cryptocurrency subsidiary), Coinbase, Creative Destruction Lab, Farfetch UK, Iliad, Kiva Micorfunds, Lyft, Mercy Corps, PayU, Ribbit Capital, Spotify, Thrive Capital, Uber, Union Square Ventures, Vodafone, Women’s World Banking, and Xapo Holdings.

The formal establishment of the Association comes after Facebook has suffered a series of heavy blows. PayPal first left the project around two weeks ago, making headlines across the globe.

Then, last Friday, a number of Libra’s finance/tech partners pulled their support, with Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, eBay, and MercadoLibre revealing that they didn’t want to move forward with Libra at this time. And on Monday, Booking Holdings — the travel booking giant whose chief executive lauded the benefits of cryptocurrencies just months ago — revealed that it would also be calling it quits.

Yet, not all is lost. Far from, according to Bertrand Perez, chief operating officer and interim managing director of the Libra Association, anyway.

In a recent interview with CNBC, the project’s executive said that while there are no banks among Libra’s founding members, “we have reputable companies that are also very active in the financial and banking space [that are interested].” He added that the organization will be making new membership announcements in the coming months.

What’s funny about this, of course, is that cryptocurrencies were created to disempower banking institutions, not to allow them to further gain dominance and control over the lives of individuals.

In the aforementioned press release, the Association indicated that there are over 1,500 entities that have indicated interest in the project. Just over 10% of that group (180 out of 1,500) purportedly met the requirements that Libra is looking for in a potential partner. It isn’t clear if banks or the financial firms that Perez was referring to fall into that category.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash