Despite serial defections, Facebook's draft currency is moving forward

While major initial partners have recently left the Facebook cryptocurrency project, Booking Holdings has abandoned the project, according to CNBC. The withdrawal of the group that publishes including Booking.com and OpenTable occurs after those of Paypal, Mastercard, Visa or Stripe and eBay.

Liberating disclaimers

This wave of disclaimers obviously does not discourage the initiators of the project. She would even be liberating, according to the term used by the project manager David Marcus on Twitter. An understandable feeling, according to the analyst at Gartner Avivah Litan, who explains on his blog that these heavyweights in the payment industry have significantly slowed the progress of the association Libra. "Threatened by regulators and the US Congress, these financial companies have had to withdraw, for fear of being subject to continuous and rigorous monitoring in the future … their decisions and votes would have no doubt were motivated by fear and compliance concerns rather than by innovation, "says the analyst.

180 new potential members

Facebook's cryptocurrency project is moving forward. The association Libra, which has 21 founding members against the 28 originally planned, has just held its first general assembly in Geneva to elect its executive committee. On this occasion, the association declared that 1'500 organizations expressed their interest to join the project, of which 180 meet the requirements to become members. Among the 21 founding members are Calibra (a subsidiary of Facebook), Lyft, Spotify and Uber, as well as telecom groups Iliad (parent company of Free) and Vodafone. The other members are various blockchain companies and venture capitalists.