Facebook’s Cryptocurrency: Should you Trust it?

Facebook is one of those companies that keeps on building a bigger network and is gaining more and more recognition by the day. In a nutshell, Facebook is taking the world and there’s nothing you can do about it.

The network of online merchants and financial institutions to support its secretive new cryptocurrency is long and varied. It seems that Zucks new pet project which needs $1 billion in order to fund the secretive stablecoin project, Project Libra and is talking with heavyweights like Visa and Mastercard to get that cash.

It’s been over a year since Libra started though, as a simple way to transfer money between WhatsApp users. But now it has grown into something a little different.

Libra has grown into something that accepts e-commerce payments on Facebook and other websites as well as rewards for viewing ads, shopping online and interacting with content.

Facebook has 1.6 billion daily active Facebook (including me, no shame) and 2.38 billion on a monthly basis so,  at launch, Libra would be fighting well against the competition (Apple Pay and PayPal).

Now I might be a user of Facebook myself but there are a lot of red flags as to why you (and I) should avoid the upcoming stablecoin from the social network.

Trust

There’s been a lot of rough historical moments in Facebook’s past, to say the least

The Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2014 saw the social network sell the personal data of almost ninety million users without the consent of the user.

Not only was this against the firm’s privacy policies but it’s just plain wrong.

Censorship

For cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, censorship is very avoidable. No one can freeze your Bitcoin wallet or block transactions but Facebook is different. The social network is able to block or freeze a financial account whenever it wants and there’s been a lot of power going to Zuckerberg's head over the past year with recently banned accounts.

At the start of May, Facebook announced that Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Nehlen and Alex Jones were banned from the platform. Facebook claims it was because they violated the platforms policy on hate speech and promoting violence.

Face-Coin

Face-Coin, Facebook Coin or whatever it is going to be called has already got a bad name and nothing has been officially announced yet.

Would you trust Facebook’s cryptocurrency?