Announced in June 2019, Facebook's cryptocurrency project finally plans to launch in January 2021, according to the Financial Times. After many controversies, what remains of the Libra project? 

Facebook's cryptocurrency, which was due to see the light of day this year, has already gone through many crises linked to the mistrust of governments and regulatory authorities. Originally, the project called Calibra was intended to allow the American giant to reduce its dependence on online advertising in betting on new financial services based on cryptocurrencies. Facebook has developed its Calibra digital wallet, which it renamed "Novi" last May, intended to facilitate cryptomononae transactions. "With Novi, sending money will be as easy as sending a message. You will be able to use Novi as a standalone application, but also in Messenger and WhatsApp," Facebook explained at the time, pending the deployment of the Libra network.

Following the controversies sparked by the cryptommonaie, the American giant was forced to revise its ambitions downwards. Indeed, many states, starting with the United States, have seen Libra as a threat to their monetary sovereignty and to the protection of users' personal data. With Facebook's 2 billion users, some governments have feared that Libra will replace their official currency. Faced with the controversy, payment services such PayPal, Stripe, Visa and Mastercard have withdrawn from the Libra association, which has pushed Facebook to abandon its vision of global cryptocurrency. 

A smooth launch
Based in Geneva, Facebook's independent association in charge of managing cryptocurrency has therefore modified its plans by making Libra a stablecoin backed by the dollar only, while it had to be backed by many currencies (such as the euro, the pound sterling or the Singapore dollar), according to financial times sources. This launch next January would allow Facebook to launch its digital wallet and take the temperature with users. 

Far from admitting defeat in the FinTech sector, the social network launched just a year ago Facebook Pay, a financial service independent of the Libra project intended to make purchases on Facebook applications (Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger).