Shopify E-Commerce Giant Joins Surviving Libra Association

Facebook’s Libra was subject to a massive backlash during its initial announcement back in 2019. However, it seems that the project is slowly regaining footing, with a new company joining its the folds of the Libra Association.

As per the announcement that was made on Friday, Shopify, one of the world’s heavyweights in e-commerce, has announced that it will join the Libra Association. Shopify joins about a month after Vodafone had pulled out of that same association, stating that the company will seek the development of its own digital payment system. It’s the first official member to join the Libra Association since its inception four months ago.

First Addition Since Libra Association’s Inception

Shopify, through the blog post, is made, stated that it would intend to “work collectively” to help develop a payment network that has the ability to function all across the world. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen.

It was last summer when Facebook first revealed the global payment project that was Libra. The Libra project focused primarily on a corporate-backed stablecoin that would be based on a basket of various fiat currencies. The Libra Association, the governing body of said project, was founded back in October of last year.

On paper, this decentralized the leadership from Facebook’s grasp. However, whether that is the truth of the matter is unclear, especially considering the presence of Calibra on the council as well. Calibra is a subsidiary of Facebook. It’s hard to be impartial to a company if the said company owns you.

Chaotic Inception

As it stands now, other members include companies like Xapo, Coinbase, Bison Trails, Anchorage, Andreessen Horowitz, Creative Destruction Lab, Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, Illiad, Union Square Ventures, Uber, Farfetch, Kiva, Lyft, Women’s World Banking, Mercy Corps, PayU, Spotify, as well as Breakthrough Initiatives.

Even with this impressive listing, it should be essential to note that a large number of companies pulled out of Libra, especially at the start. Big names like PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Booking Holdings, Mercado Pago, and Stripe have all pulled their support. They withdrew before even the council was formed, as the world tried to choke the initiative through sheer scrutiny alone.

Dying Trends

However, it seems now that the world has gone through the initial shock of Libra; things are okay. The media has stopped demonizing it as evil country-destroying crypto. Soon, the world can realize that it’s just another genius way to make money for corporations.