Facebook’s Libra Will Be Delayed For At Least 3 Years, Believes Ripple CEO

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by Teuta Franjkovic · 3 min read
Facebook’s Libra Will Be Delayed For At Least 3 Years, Believes Ripple CEO
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Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that Libra would not get off the ground for at least three years. He thinks regulatory scrutiny over Facebook’s crypto project is due to the social media giant’s privacy debacle last year.

When Facebook announced it is going with its own cryptocurrency Libra back in June, the CEO of Ripple Labs Inc., a US-based technology company, Brad Garlinghouse, was one of its first open supporters.

Actually, he was so thrilled by the whole project and all the ‘fuss’ it had gathered in the crypto community that he decided to send the champagne to the Zuckerberg & Co.

Be it as it may, a hard times has come to Libra, even before it actually came to circulation. As we had previously reported, Libra is facing opposition by the US regulators and now, Brad Garlinghouse seems to have lost its faith in this cryptocurrency saying that he doesn’t believe Facebook will launch it in the next three years – “if ever.”

In on of his latest interviews he said:

“I would bet that Libra…let’s say, by the end of 2022, I think Libra will not have launched.”

He then added that he doesn’t think Facebook could follow through on the vision it originally laid out for Libra. He also said:

“I think maybe Libra would have been better received if Facebook had not been the point of the arrow. Facebook has been in the crosshairs of a bunch of governments around the world.”

Even though Facebook said it won’t launch Libra without regulators’ blessing, Garlinghouse commented that there are lousy chances that company even gets to this point. “I think it’s going to be a tough road,” he stated.

As this was happening, another bad thing happened for Libra. PayPal, one of the first backers of Libra as a founding member of the cryptocurrency’s governance association, hinted that it would no longer participate in the project.
And, when talking about Ripple, it had its problems as well, especially when talking about regulations. It was always questioned whether the Ripple’s cryptocurrency XRP should be identified as a security, which would subject it to additional rules and oversight by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ripple has definitely positioned itself strongly during the last few months as one of the most important companies for the crypto sector as well as the whole blockchain technologies scene and whatever SEC says, it may be too late for XRP to be classed as a security.

Max Rich, deputy counsel at the crowdfunding platform Republic, thinks earlier public sales, like Ripple, may still be dealt with by the SEC. That said, they may not be the regulator’s immediate focus.

“It’s likely they are using limited resources to address offerings where there are i) principals that can be identified, ii) funds can be traced and clawed back and iii) benefits that can be gotten for the public – an enforcement net benefit,” he said last year.

Garlinghouse said:

“One really important distinction is, the XRP ledger existed before Ripple the company. Certainly we are an interested party in the success of the XRP ledger, for sure. We own a lot of XRP. But it’s a little bit like saying, Exxon owns a lot of oil. That doesn’t make oil a security.”

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