Facebook launched Libra, their cryptocurrency platform back in June this year and they had on board a lot of partners. However, these partners started to leave the Libra consortium one by one and the whole project looks like it is in jeopardy.
However, Facebook is disputing all of that. David Marcus, Facebook’s Head of Calibra told Yahoo Finance in an interview that their blockchain is “absolutely not” in jeopardy after some partners like Paypal, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Mercado Pago and Booking decided to leave the project.
“You really have to, as a member, have passion and energy and fortitude to go through this because it’s hard,” he said to Yahoo Finance. “And it’s going to continue being hard. If anything, it’s going to get harder before it gets easier.”
David Marcus said he respected the companies decisions to leave the project. “But I also understand that they also have a responsibility to their shareholders and to their stakeholders and they were under a lot of pressure,” he was quoted as saying.
Facebook launched Libra Association back in June and they partnered with 27 companies as the founding members. They still have big names in the association that includes ride sharing companies (Uber and Lyft), Spotify, Coinbase, PayU and the likes.
Marcus says that there is still a lot of work to do in the future. Apparently the association is now formal and the next step is finding more diversity in its membership and reaching the goal of having around 100 members in the organization by 2020.
That last goal will be difficult due to the exit of key players and we will have to see how it will fair out in the long run.
