Facebook’s Head of Cryptocurrency Projects Considers Bitcoin “Digital Gold”

The cryptocurrency community was more-or-less tepid in their reception of the Libra stablecoin. The Facebook-backed cryptocurrency has had a troubled time since its announcement back in June this year.

Libra and Bitcoin have been in some sort of unofficial competition since its announcement. Many have suggested that tech companies should adopt Bitcoin instead of Libra, something that Twitter is taking to the next step by endorsing the cryptocurrency over their rival’s coin.

Marcus: Bitcoin is Gold, not Money

David Marcus, Facebook’s Head of Cryptocurrency Projects, explains that Libra and Bitcoin serve a radically different role compared to each other. He described Bitcoin as “digital gold” instead of a currency.

Marcus further stated that he didn’t consider Bitcoin as a form of currency altogether. He said this during the New York Times Dealbook Conference that happened a week ago. He added to his statement that Bitcoin wasn’t a suitable exchange medium due to Bitcoin’s volatility.

Comparing Bitcoin to gold is nothing new. The most optimistic bitcoin investors hold hope that Bitcoin will manage to overtake the gold market value of $8 trillion. Bitcoin has a long way to go to achieve this. The market value for the cryptocurrency is just managing $160 billion. As it stands, the gold market value is fifty times larger than the digital asset.

A Volatile Mess

Market watchers from the crypto community had held out hopes that the price of Bitcoin would start to stabilize as the market matured, but so far that strategy has failed. Bitcoin is continuing to hop up and down the value line and making daily market moves surpassing traditional stocks, commodities, and currencies.

Libra vs The World

Facebook had unveiled its plans to rival bitcoin via its Libra coin in June this year. The act itself served as an “endorsement” of sorts for blockchain technology as a whole. Investors quickly started to buy up Bitcoin again but stopped shortly after as world regulation started to press down against the “pro-anarchy” currency.

Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States and a generally controversial figure, gave his two cents about the Libra situation. He was among many politicians and regulators who spoke against Libra, stating that it would undermine a central bank’s control of money as well as increase money-laundering operations.

Facebook has subsequently distanced itself from the Bitcoin cryptocurrency to try and do some damage control. They have also argued that the company is willing to work with governments and regulators to create Libra in a standardized format.

Facebook’s Libra project was intended to act as a form of digital currency. It was expected to primarily be used in regions of the world that did not have a properly developed financial infrastructure. Those plans had a wrench thrown in as ever-growing regulations forced members of its founding Libra Foundation out of the formerly 28-member corporate body.