As reported by Coindesk, Facebook’s Libra Coin is very much similar to a white paper for Tradecoin which was written in MIT last year and offers all features of Libra but – much earlier.
The Libra Coin ‘source’
The white paper came out in 2018 in the Royal Society’s Open Science publication and it was written by several MIT fellows. The document speaks of a transnational digital coin backed by a basket of tangible assets – crops or oil.
Tradecoin was meant to be governed by a consortium of companies, which is also true about Libra – the same name Association consists of nearly thirty fintech and VC companies.
Both Tradecoin and Libra were meant for transnational payments and offer to include the unbanked population of the planet into the present financial system.
Alex Lipton from MIT says:
Without being particularly obnoxious, I can tell you that the actual structure of Libra is pretty much lifted verbatim from the paper which Sandy Pentland and Thomas Hardjono and I published last year.
The authors of the project were never named in the Libra's white paper. This was taken by Lipton as another insult since their project description was free of charge on the Royal Society’s Open Science page.
Lipton also added:
The Libra people cannot really say that they have not read that. Or, if they have not read that, they shouldn’t be probably doing what they are doing in the first place.
Coincheck’s owner stands by Libra
Reterus Japan reports that Monex group, the company that owns the Japanese Coincheck exchange ill-famous for its historical hack in winter 2018, has publicly announced its support of the Facebook’s Libra Coin project and has applied to join it.
The price of entering the Libra Association is allegedly $10 mln. However, the current 27 members of it have recently stated that they are not in an official partnership with Libra yet and many of them merely signed non-binding agreements.
