Hey everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again. As you can tell by the sensationalized article title, we’re going to talk about Crypto today… more specifically about “Bitcoin $12k? Facebook’s Libra? “

It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about Crypto. I thought this year was going to be a little more exciting than it has been thus far.

However, this year has been pretty boring. There has been some price action up and down, but the real big story recently is Bitcoin going up to mid $12k. This is pretty interesting considering it was only $4k as late as April.

So what now? FOMO time?

Well, no… not for me anyways.

My unpopular opinion is that I don’t really see the long term value in Bitcoin. I do understand what it has done and I do understand that it can be used as a store of value. However, long term I have concerns about its actual real world use outside of a store of value.

For me, nothing has changed, I still only hold the tokens that I believe will someday have a real world use case. Those two coins are still Ripple (XRP) and Cardano (ADA). This hasn’t changed since I bought them awhile ago. I think that Ripple (XRP) will have value in being utilized for the cross border payments. I believe that Cardano (ADA) will at least partially succeed in its goal to “bank the unbanked”. As I type this Ripple (XRP) sits around $0.48 and Cardano (ADA) sits around $0.10.

I picked my “horses”, paid my taxes, and am just sitting on them for now. I don’t foresee myself selling them until they become a fixture in the global economy. Either that happens to they become worthless. Like I’ve said before, I don’t own very much cryptocurrency so whether it goes to $10 or $0 doesn’t change much for me.

That said, I don’t see myself buying any more cryptocurrency in the near future.

Wait, what about Facebook’s cryptocurrency? Libra?

Yea, about Libra. There is a good article about it here, from Verge.

Long story short is that while it uses cryptocurrency tech, it’s kind of against the ethos of cryptocurrency because it’s a permissioned ledger. In general, people like cryptocurrencies because of their usual decentralized nature. However, you don’t technically need to be decentralized to be a cryptocurrency.

Libra is not a stablecoin… it’s not like Tether, pegged to the US Dollar. However, it is backed by a reserve or multiple different currencies.

So, here’s kind of where it gets weird. Whereas Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are mined or minted, Libra has its own internal monetary policy — although it’s not really clear what exactly it is. However, I get the sense that there is a board which decides things. This sounds a lot like a Federal Reserve of sorts to me.

Wait… what about privacy?

Well, there’s the rub. This is Facebook we’re talking about here. You can only imagine their cryptocurrency Libra will have exactly zero privacy. What does this mean exactly? Well it will mean that anything you use to spend Libra on someone somewhere knows about it and is doing something with that information.

There is also 27 partners to be aware of. I would imagine that these “partners” can share your information with each other. This is just bad news in general.

So, what do you think?

I don’t like it.

I understand what is trying to be done, but this is not the revolution we are looking for. “Libra” will just create a new digital currency to play in their own sandbox with. All of these partners make this sandbox pretty large and it makes it pretty easy to move value around. What this will allow these big companies to know is exert more control over consumers and make themselves more money.

Unless something drastically changes, I don’t ever see myself using Libra.

The only potentially good thing to come about from Facebook’s cryptocurrency is that it will bring crypto back into the spotlight. Also, with the huge corporations partnered around Libra, the government will need to move forward with creating the appropriate legislation. Also, we know that Facebook are wizards when it comes to UI/UX, maybe they will help make cryptocurrency more user friendly?

Maybe Facebook’s Libra is Cryptocurrency’s America Online moment?

TL;DR

Bitcoin $12k…?!?! But no FOMO from me.

Still sticking with Ripple (XRP) and Cardano (ADA).

I don’t like Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra… it isn’t what cryptocurrency is for and I hope I never have to use it.

Maybe Facebook’s Libra is Cryptocurrency’s America Online moment?

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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