During the pre-launch of the ParisBlockchainWeek Summit 2020, which took place on 12th September, Bertrand Perez, Managing Director and COO of Libra, gave us pretty interesting insights about Libra’s project.
First of all, Libra is a non-profit organization based in Geneva (Switzerland) which plans in launching Libra crypto-currency in May 2020.
The organization is actually compounded of 28 members coming from various activity sectors :
- Payments : Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, …
- Technology and MarketPlaces : Facebook (Calibra), Ebay, Spotify, Uber, …
- Blockchain : Anchorage, Coinbase, …
- Venture Capital : Andreessen Horowitz, Ribbit Capital, …
- Non-governmental organization : Women’s World Banking, Mercy corps, …
Before Libra’s launch, this list should increase until 100 members (the organization is still interviewing new companies) but the above 28 companies will become the association’s Founding Members upon its completion.
Libra has its own blockchain which is open source and aims to be in 5 years 20% permission less. This blockchain will be improved through new apps developed by “free-lance” developers.
For Bertrand Perez, Libra has been created to notably facilitate international transfers at a lower cost and faster (1000 Transactions per second for Day 1). As a result, Libra doesn’t intend to replace any FIAT currencies but should be considered as a complementary solution for worldwide payment with a digital identity.
Nevertheless, Libra will be a stable coin based on a basket of 5 FIAT currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, YEN, Singapour Dollar) and short term government bonds. This reserve would be held in several commercial banks with a concentrated volume.
Libra should be available on multiple robust exchanges. To prevent money laundering and financing of terrorism, Libra will create a financial intelligence unit to work on building a framework of confidence with strong processes.
Bertrand Perez was confident in launching Libra in mid-2020 but only if the organization is approved by the regulator. As he pointed out “they are not a “crypto-anarchists gang”, they intend to work in the legality and improve their technology in order to be fully compliant. “
Written by Hedgeguard team