Libra Co-Creator Claims: Bitcoin Is Not A Viable Currency

Libra co-creator David Marcus, claimed that Bitcoin is not a viable currency during a speech at the New York Times DealBook Conference this week. Let’s find out more about his opinions on the latest bitcoin news today.

One of the most common arguments against bitcoin is that the cryptocurrency is not usable as a real currency. However, this is not the popular sentiment online but the argument recently gained traction with David Marcus who is the blockchain lead at Facebook, revealing he is not a fan of using bitcoin as a currency. He was known to be bitcoin advocate in the past and claimed to have the cryptocurrency for years now so why did he change his mind? Well, he addressed Bitcoin’s volatility as the number one problem:

 “People don’t use a unit like the digital currency of Bitcoin to pay for things just because it’s so volatile.  It’s actually not a great medium of exchange because of its volatility.”

To illustrate the point, the Libra co-creator used many examples of how Bitcoin’s volatility could affect those who want to make international remittances through the cryptocurrency. by seeing that Bitcoin has seen both the 42 percent and -10 percent days in the past few weeks, the arguments seem to hold the weight. What is also interesting about Marcus’ comments, he is not the first executive in the industry that shares the same opinion.

Speaking last year during a conference, Litecoin’s creator Charlie Lee opined for crypto adoption to take place but the volatility has to be limited, he argued:

 “Because crypto prices are so volatile, it’s hard for people to actually use it, meaning adoption is hampered. Volatility is kind of a chicken and the egg type scenario. Once there is adoption, volatility will decrease, meaning more adoption. So it’s a slow process for that to work for us to overcome that.”

Jack Dorsey, the Twitter chief executive made a similar argument during his interview in September and argued that the cryptocurrency is not yet functional as a currency because of its high volatility:

 “The peaks and troughs are like an investment asset and are equivalent to gold. What we need to do is make it more usable and accessible as a currency, but it’s not there yet.”

Samson Mow of Blockstream expressed similar opinions but for different reasons than volatility. He said that the base layer of Bitcoin takes up to 10 minutes to process the transactions so sometimes it takes up to three hours as well.