Hi,

I'm new to bitcointalk and to crypto currencies in general. I'm not pretenting to know much on the topic. The following is only personal opinions and speculations. It is also a message to my future self, so I remember why I invested in Monero in the first place!

I'm a developer and I am currently working (for unrelated reasons) on a banking application. This work lead me to search on cryptocurrencies and on how things have changed in the past years.

A big "HA!" moment occured to me when I learned how things now work in China!!! If you only have heard of WeChat, I highly suggest you do some research, look at some videos, etc. I'm from Canada and I had no clue what WeChat was. In short, everybody in China now pay using WeChat Pay. Some street merchants don't even accept cash anymore! WeChat Pay is a centralised digital currency, controlled by the China government (behind Tencent).

I'm absolutely sure this kind of easy payment/money exchange mecanism is coming to western countries soon. And Libra is exactly that: big companies trying to be in control of that first digital currency that is going to be used eveywhere in the west! Those companies will provide cheap terminals to anybody wanting one, to help adoption. They will fight Bitcoin and will make Libra easier to use for the mass.

I may be wrong about this one, but my opinion is that the gouvernment (at least the US gov) is secretly behind the Libra project. Probably big banks too... As they are already involved in Facebook in a way or another, I'm sure.

They want to present Libra as the creation of someone else (Facebook and various partners), as a project that they "will highly regulate", and they will probably really take some actions "agains Libra" to show they are not involved in the project.

But this will only be smoke and mirrors. Don't be fooled, they know something like WeChat Pay is coming. They are not stupid people, they know what is going on in China and India. And, above all, they want to be in control of this digital currency in the west...

In short, I do think that Libra will succeed. Call it a fake cryptocurrency or not, it will be irrelevent to regular people.

Of course it will take some time for people from the west to adapt to this new way of paying and exchanging money, but they eventually will, as Libra will be very, very convenient.

The difference between China and the west though, is that westerners care more about their privacy. Like, a lot more. Libra will be a gateway drug to real crypto currencies interest in the general population. People will learn that there are other ways to pay/exchange money as easily as with Libra, but without leaking information to big companies, with privacy in mind.

Those people will probably don't be interested by Bitcoin that much since Bitcoin will not offer them something significantly better than Libra. But they may certainly be interested in a solution that makes their money transactions private!

This is when Monero may really start shinning. My prediction is that Monero will eventually even overtake Bitcoin, and by far. Again, because :

1) Libra will be backed by huge organisations.
2) Bitcoin will not offer enough extra features to interest most consumers.
3) Monero will be a mature, tested, alternative providing real privacy.

troumla

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