CoinCorner’s CEO, Danny Scott, commented:

“It’s been announced that France plans to block Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency in the EU over concerns that it poses a threat to the sovereignty of national currencies. This comes as no surprise given the regulatory backlash Facebook has received since the announcement of Libra back in June.

It’s unrealistic to think that a single, private entity could be accountable for that level of control, and the French Economy and Finance Minister thinks so too. At a conference this week, Bruno Le Maire stated that Facebook is a “sole actor with more than 2 billion users on the planet” - clearly Facebook is out for world domination, something I’ve actually suggested before. It’s also important to remember that this isn’t the first time Facebook has tried to enter the financial space, in fact, they’ve had numerous failed attempts before. Unfortunately, it just so happens that this time they’ve launched into an emerging industry which receives global attention and the result is that they’ve managed to gain momentum with this project.

We understand that it can be confusing to the public as to why a cryptocurrency concept like Libra can be banned, whereas it would be much harder to ban an actual cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin. It’s important to remember the difference between the two; Libra is completely controlled by a single entity (Facebook) and Bitcoin is not as the control lies with the everyday people using it. This is called decentralisation and is one of the fundamental features of Bitcoin that make it so unique.

We expect to see this ban having somewhat of a domino effect, with more countries following suit to ban Libra over the coming months.”