A month and a half after promising a digital currency that would have rescued 1.7 Billion people without access to the banking system, Facebook now says “too risky”. No wait, let’s read their own words from their second quarterly report:
We recently announced our participation in the Libra Association, which will oversee a proposed digital currency powered by blockchain technology, and our plans for Calibra, a digital wallet for Libra which we expect to launch in Messenger, WhatsApp, and as a standalone application.
[…] laws and regulations may delay or impede the launch of the Libra currency as well as the development of our products and services, increase our operating costs, require significant management time and attention, or otherwise harm our business. In addition, market acceptance of such currency is subject to significant uncertainty. As such, there can be no assurance that Libra or our associated products and services will be made available in a timely manner, or at all.
Even thought the quarter ended on June 30, the document looks like finalized on July 19, three days after the Senate hearing with Calibra leader David Marcus. So I believe it’s written as a consequence of that hearing, where reception was cold and some senators ended up praising Bitcoins rather than Zuckbucks.
My personal opinion still holds, it’s an interesting, over-the-top, idea (albeit unrelated to cryptocurrencies), but we won’t see it developed very soon.