Facebook reveals its cryptocurrency Libra

    The Libra Association also serves as the entity through which the Libra Reserve
    is managed, and hence the stability and growth of the Libra economy are
    achieved. The association is the only party able to create (mint) and destroy
    (burn) Libra. Coins are only minted when authorized resellers have purchased
    those coins from the association with fiat assets to fully back the new coins.
    Coins are only burned when the authorized resellers sell Libra coin to the
    association in exchange for the underlying assets. Since authorized resellers
    will always be able to sell Libra coins to the reserve at a price equal to the
    value of the basket, the Libra Reserve acts as a “buyer of last resort.” These
    activities of the association are governed and constrained by a Reserve
    Management Policy that can only be changed by a supermajority of the association
    members.

Anyone who thinks this is going to replace ripple, I have some bad news for you.

Ripples main focus is not for users purchasing goods across websites. Its focus is mainly for banks (to hold vast amounts of XRP) when sending sums of money to each other, to be able to convert fiat into XRP and then send that XRP between them and then convert XRP into the receiving fiat currency.

The remittence market is huge and that's where ripple is mainly interested. Both banks and businesses are using it because there is a high trust factor with Ripple.

Now of course Facebook is trying to supplant ripple here, as a user won't need to go to a bank or remittence provider which would use either SWIFT or XRP to send the funds. Instead facebook is hoping to tap into the network effect it has built and two users can send monies between each other using this new token.

Another thing that I have an issue with. The article mentions eliminating "rent seeking". How so? Paypal, Visa, Mastercard all charge a % when processing a transaction. The $10m buying fee needs to be recuperated. Are transactions going to be free? Perhaps... Is running the nodes and network going to be free? It's certainly not.

There is going to be a fee for sending currency across the network. Either an up-front transaction fee or a conversion to FIAT fee. But there will be a fee.

If the same old players are involved, you can bet they want to get paid and the same old players will want to eventually impose their own rules to the game.

Personally, I don't think this will usurp Bitcoin. If anything else, I think it will make people more comfortable with digital currencies and then we'll have more leaps in better tech and the free market will bear fruit of a much lower priced solution than libra coin.