OpenLibra announced as alternative to Libra

OpenLibra has been announced as ‘an alternative to Facebook’s Libra, that places emphasis on open governance and economic decentralization’. Blockchain infrastructure startup Wireline announced OpenLibra as a permissionless fork of the criticized stablecoin.

The organization behind the newly announced project thinks that the idea of Facebook is excellent, but it shouldn’t be run by the social media behemoth. The tagline on their website reads: ‘an open platform for financial inclusion. Not run by Facebook.’

How OpenLibra wants to be better than Libra

OpenLibra thinks that Facebook might succeed, despite the backlash it’s currently receiving from governments worldwide. The team behind OpenLibra wants to be an alternative that takes away the major concerns about Facebook’s Libra.

The problem is that Facebook and its partners want to create a digital currency to reach 4 billion people. This would make Facebook and these 21 companies extremely powerful. Their coin could replace existing financial structures and compete with traditional banks. However, major corporations own the project. That means it’s not decentralized. In addition it requires permissions to interact with, and there are no privacy guarantees. Those are the problems that OpenLibra wants to solve.

Libra pushes central banks to digital currencies

Even if Facebook won’t succeed in launching Libra, they did accomplish one thing: governments worldwide are going to launch digital versions of their native money. China is working on a digital yuan, and this week Switzerland also announced their plans. At the same time Germany wants to introduce a digital version of the euro, while there are also things going on in the States.

These developments could mean a lot for the status of cryptocurrencies. Perhaps bitcoin it will add value to bitcoin and its adoption in the long run. INB Bank believes that central banks will all have a digital currency within three years.

Originally published at NEDEROB.