What we need to understand about Libra, Facebook's cryptocurrency

One of Facebook's efforts to increase its profits, after the privacy scandals that the Cambridge Analytica disclosure unleashed, has been to be an intermediary for payments and money exchanges. While PayPal co-founder (Peter Thiel) is in the board of directors of Facebook, it is not exactly an online payment platform that the technology giant is aiming for.

Libra, a new cryptocurrency that is naturally potentiated by blockchain technology, would be Facebook's great initiative to solve its future in future years. While it is not the best or most interesting cryptocurrency, it would be the first large-scale effort and backed by other titans such as Uber, Visa, MasterCard, Lyft, Coinbase, MercadoPago, PayPal, eBay, Spotify and Stripe.

We read in Hypertextual more about it:

"Libra's mission is to make possible a simple and global currency, as well as a financial infrastructure that empowers billions of people," they say from the company. For this it has the support of dozens of renowned companies around the world, which they are expected to exceed one hundred by the time it is launched, which will take place in the first half of 2020. It is "a combination of money, justice and freedom", they point out, as stated Wired, referring to "the ancient Roman unit of measurement, the astrological symbol that represents the scale of justice and its phonetic resemblance to the French 'free'."

While Libra is the name of the new currency, being regulated by notable investments from the aforementioned partners and others, Facebook would gain economically by promoting it as a (literally) currency as if it were the peso or dollar, to be acquired with money real and used for payments in the main app, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The most obvious application would be to use Instagram as a sales platform for businesses and be an intermediary that suggests using Libra for some kind of discount.

Still, the ace up Facebook's sleeve is the app Calibrate, a virtual wallet to make use of the pounds acquired.

More info at The Verge