What many had suspected for some time now, turned out to be true...

Rewind the clock almost exactly one year ago today.

It was at this time that Facebook was announcing it's official plans for Libra, and bitcoin was hitting year to date highs.

Libra was a stable coin that would be integrated into the Facebook platform and used by its many users in a number of ways.

However, shorter after announcing Libra, Facebook was attacked from just about every angle by different regulators and governments doing their best to squash the project before it got off the ground.

Many suspected that this was by design due to fear surrounding how popular a Facebook launched stable coin could be, and it turns out those suspicions were exactly right.

In an article out this morning it was revealed by David Weild (known as the father of the JOBS Act) said that the government acted the way that they did with Libra and Facebook was due to concerned that this currency could actually challenge the supremacy of the dollar...

Yep, you read that right. The U.S. government was concerned that a Facebook currency could take over as the world's reserve currency.

Why is that you may be wondering?

Numbers...

(Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/#:~:text=How%20many%20users%20does%20Facebook,network%20ever%20to%20do%20so.)

It really all comes down to numbers and Facebook has a ton of em...

As of the most recent quarter, Facebook has north of 2.5 billion users.

For comparison, the United States only has 330 million people total.

And there are only 7.8 billion people on the planet, total.

Which means...

Facebook has roughly 1/3rd of all the people in the world using its platform.

That creates a pretty large potential user base for a currency!

Which is exactly what Weild noted as well, saying:

“I mean, because of the sheer magnitude of Facebook and the implications of effectively creating a de novo basket of currencies that could serve as a central bank authority to some degree. I thought it had such profound implications that they had to put the brakes on it. They had to get Zuckerberg to come to Washington and start to understand broadly these questions.”

(Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/father-of-jobs-act-govt-was-concerned-libra-could-displace-dollar)

This is also why Bitcoin hasn't been banned or shut down in the United States...

Judging by this reaction and these comments from Weild, I think it is pretty safe to say that the United States government doesn't view bitcoin as a competitor to the dollar.

Is it a store of value, sure, but does it compete with the dollar in terms of every day payments and trade? Not even close.

And this is exactly why bitcoin has been allowed to grow up without any heavy handed restrictions/bans levied on it.

Had bitcoin been able to compete directly the dollar we would have seen a lot more governmental pushback levied against it than we have seen thus far.

As long as bitcoin remains akin to digitial gold, there likely will be no issues.

And considering that gold has more than an $8 trillion dollar market, that is perfectly ok with me.

For those thinking that bitcoin is going to completely take over payments and topple over the current financial system, well, expect a ton of government pushback should that day present itself.

It won't be an easy fight, as Facebook has had to learn the hard way.

Stay informed my friends.

-Doc