Recently, Facebook released a white paper on its cryptocurrency, Libra, and described it as a “global currency.”
Being based on blockchain technology, Libra is very similar to bitcoin although it also depends on real assets such as a portfolio of stable government bonds; more than 20 partner institutions including MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Coinbase will participate in the plan. Each partner agency will pay at least US$10 million as membership fee and Facebook initially intends to attract at least 100 partner institutions and US $1 billion of assets.
In practical operation, Libra is more like the online payment systems such as PayPal instead of the cryptocurrency like bitcoin. The following three figures illustrate why Libra is more like the PayPal instead of bitcoin.
