Facebook’s Libra To Make 2021 Debut As Single, Dollar-Backed Coin

Facebook‘s digital currency, Libra, could launch by January, but in a “limited format,” according to officials, as reported by Financial Times (FT).

Libra, which has been in the works for over a year, initially planned to roll out one synthetic coin backed by a multitude of currencies. Then the plan had to be downgraded in April, when regulators’ concerns forced a shift to a plan to launch digital versions of several coins plus a “digital composite” of all Libra coins.

Now, the new plan is to launch a single coin that is backed one-for-one by the dollar, according to FT, with other currencies and composites being rolled out at later times.

The date isn’t set in stone yet and depends on how long it takes for Libra to get approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), but it’s possible that could happen by January, FT reported.

Libra was first launched in June 2019, but regulators were concerned over the scope of what it wanted to do. They warned that the cryptocurrency could be used for money laundering and posed threats to monetary stability, FT reported. While the scaled-down plans might be more palatable for regulators, though, critics say the single-coin requirement could undermine goals of more financial stability by adding costs, making it harder for users to convert currencies.

In separate news, Libra might be one of the currencies that can work with FastPay, which a white paper by Mathieu Baudet, George Danezis and Alberto Sonnino, who are affiliated with Facebook’s Novi wallet, said allows distributed authorities to keep up a high-integrity and availability settlement system for pre-funded payments.

FastPay, they said, should work as a system for settling transactions for real-time gross settlement functions, including fiat transactions and others involving crypto payments.