Libra Not Trusted by 49% of US and UK Respondents: Survey

By Prashant Jha

A recent survey, conducted by Viber, the instant messaging application, tells us that nearly half of US citizens and British citizens would not be too trusting of Libra, the new stablecoin being proposed and launched by a consortium of corporate majors, led by Facebook. Facebook’s much anticipated cryptocurrency project has already received a lot of flak, especially as concerns about Facebook’s past brushes with privacy issues have come up in the conversation. Now, it seems that many members of the public are also buying into the narrative of skeptical regulators.

It seems that about 49 per cent of the people surveyed from the United Kingdom and the United States have stated that they would be unwilling to repose much faith in Facebook, which has had a tenuous history with regard to users’ data privacy issues. The respondents in the survey clearly tended to say that they would not be ready to trust Facebook to keep their private data safe when it came to them using the Libra crypto.

Notably, any form of cryptocurrency should have the basic quality of decentralization inherent in it. However, with Facebook, commentators are doubtful as to how far the company may be trusted to handle a thoroughly decentralized system. Till now, a lot of officials that are a part of regulatory organizations have been quite vocal about the need to implement adequate and satisfactory safeguards to protect prospective users of Libra.

Among the British, 28% of the respondents claimed that they were still torn, and undecided about Libra. A mere 4% of the UK respondents said that they would be able to have faith in Facebook. Similar trends were observed in the US as well, with just 2.5% of the respondents saying that they would trust the social media major.

G7 Finance Ministers, US Congressman Maxine Waters, and many more regulators have come out with sharp criticism against Libra, and it seems that the laymen are also buying into the narrative of skepticism, despite Libra project lead David Marcus attempting to defend the project and address the concerns surrounding it.