Vitalik Buterin: Libra is a Real Wake-up Call for Governments

The emerging cryptocurrency from social media giant Facebook has been hit with yet another wave of attacks that could lead to a possible set back coming as a result of fresh resistance from regulatory bodies across the globe.

Lately, France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire had said in an official announcementthat the development of Libra in their country won't be allowed as it threatens the monetary sovereignty of the government. Germany had also followed the footsteps of France in this regard.

In an interview with Globes, Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin had expressed his thoughts on Libra. In his comment about the present controversies surrounding this project, he said that the current structure of Libra did not adequately cater to privacy as this happens to be of utmost concern since its announcement in June.

The current working model of Libra is built to allow its customers to store their funds in custody wallets. Aside from the fact that this alone spells out a lot of danger for prospective users, it offers nothing new when compared to the traditional financial systems where companies are to conduct a process of customer recognition. In Vitalik's opinion, this poses a major problem for Libra. He said:

“In a situation like this, it’s always possible that a certain company will create a wallet that does not carry out such a process, and there may be people who will use it for money laundering.”

He also clearly stated that there is still a possibility of making these changes as the project is yet to be launched. Vitalik iterated that Libra is a “wakeup call for governments” seeing that countries like China had started to take proactive measures by fast-tracking their national CBDC program once Facebook announced its stablecoin project. He further stated that:

“In my opinion, projects like libra are like a wakeup call for governments, which are now realizing that if they don’t revise the technology of their sovereign currency, they will have competition. We are therefore now seeing a lot of interest in creating a sovereign digital currency.”