Facebook reveals its its long-awaited Libra cryptocurrency

The social networking giant Facebook revealed on Tuesday its plans to launch its long awaited cryptocurrency "Libra", which will allow users starting from next year to pay through its applications and through the Whatsapp application.

According to the white paper of the project, which details the Facebook project for the encrypted financial infrastructure based on the technology of Blockchain, the currency will be based on a technical expandable core.

The nascent currency is set to support a range of financial assets to give them higher intrinsic value and to mitigate sharp price fluctuations, including a basket of bank deposits and short-term government securities.

David Marcus, the currency project manager, said Facebook would never be able to deal with transactions. He added that Libra would initially be used mainly for transfers between different currencies, while the currency will be a complete mean of payment according to the long-term project vision.

In order to achieve that vision, Facebook formed a non-profit alliance based in Switzerland for the management and control of the project. Among the members of the alliance are about 28 international companies, including the financial services giants Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.

Facebook plans to expand the alliance to about 100 members by the time the cryptocurrency is launched in the first half of 2020.

Although the ultimate decision-making power rests with this alliance, Facebook is expected to retain a leadership role by the end of this year, and the subsidiary Calibra has been set up to ensure that social and financial data are separated.

The members of the Board of Directors of the Alliance are the founding members, each company invested in this project by about $10 million to provide one vote in the Alliance Council.