¡Carpe diem!
"YOLO"
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any company that has done this in recent history of actually building something, investing considerable amount of resources into it, and then saying ok, we are going to relinquish our power here and we are going to try to make it as open ecosystem as it can be and basically tie one or both hands in our backs when it comes to enabling competition on the very thing that we’ve created”
Social payment apps like Venmo, which grew 2.6 times more than its parent company did last year, cater to the social lifestyle habits of Generation Zs, allowing them to share and split payments for presents, holidays, dinners etc. Libra will act much the same. Facebook’s digital wallet – newly-named Novi – will be integrated into its messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, allowing users to send money peer-to-peer (P2P) as easily as they send a text.
The key difference is that Libra will not require users to have a bank account, hence having the ability to tap millions of unbanked consumers around the world. Skipping the bank altogether, Libra could cause some disruption. But this will likely only go so deep, with banks still serving a purpose when it comes to issues of employment, housing, tax and immigration.
So, who really cares about this newest Diem P2P global currency solution when we already have seen how works the good ol' SDRs, our well known friend Bitcoin, and we're next to see how will work the newcoming CBDCs and even the Digital Yuan which barely just six years ago already processed over $5 trillion worth of transactions through digital wallets upon the Alipay and WeChat Pay platforms that already had seen widespread adoption? Isn't this just Facebook trying to play catch up to its global rivals?
On other hand...
Everything seems possible for this next 2021 and the following years for a mostly expected eventual "Great Reset" that will drive us and force us to start everything from scratch all over again. Including portable digital identity, financial inclusion, decentralized platforms, digital resources ownership, Web 3.0 and competition.
However, I still wonder the impactful role that with all certainty will play the main actors, the traditional gatekeepers and cerberus watchdogs of the global economy in all this upcoming new financial game sooner than later.
Let's say erm... for example, banksters, governments, central banks, investments firms, venture capital, big financial institutions, lawyers, supreme courts and above all the Supervisory Authorities and Regulators of the global financial market?
Like by instance, FINMA and FinCEN to name only two that come to my mind now considering that the second of these vigilant and supervisorial institutions broke recently into the mass media with an interesting Christmas announcement.
Oh! and undoubtedly the role that a whole new generation of ingenious, unexpected and slightly furtive underground "regulators" will play in the financial markets too to put some balance and order in the table. Then, I can't help but think!