Libra’s greatest asset (Facebook) is its greatest liability: Ethereum Co-founder

Ethereum Co-founder Joe Lubin featured on a Fintech Beat’s latest podcast to discuss the details around the launch of Ethereum 2.0. During the podcast, the entrepreneur began by highlighting the change from proof of work to proof of stake for transaction confirmations, which intends to eliminate the use of specialized hardware. Touching upon the usability aspect of the upgrade, Lubin commented that “Ethereum is a platform for decentralized applications, somewhat in contrast to what Bitcoin is, which is a platform for cryptocurrency transactions.”

Further, Lubin also spoke about his interest in Facebook’s Libra and other similar projects. He stated,

“Projects like Libra already exist and variations of it should exist. Its greatest asset currently is really it’s greatest liability. And that’s Facebook. With Facebook driving it, it really clouds the whole Libra project.”

Lubin went on to attribute this claim to Facebook’s previous episodes with “trust, abuse of people’s personal information, monetization of people’s attention and addicting people to their systems,” factors that have all had significant geopolitical effects already.

That being said, Lubin stressed on the fact that many different systems similar to Libra will eventually enable people and nation-states around the world to “make use of price-stable currencies, something which will enable easier cross-border commerce and better access to price stability” to nations that witness tremendous volatility in their currencies.

Interestingly, the Ethereum Co-founder also spoke of the average lifespan of a nation-state currency, asserting that it is about 70 years, which can mean an ‘end of life scenario’ for a lot of major currencies around the world. He ended the conversation by saying,

“It would be good to have a bunch of these price stable currencies that facilitated cross border payments or that were priced stable, because many countries don’t have price stable currencies and the citizens of those countries would benefit from that.”