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Libra Critique Towards Global Decentralized Financial System

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Smart City and Informatization (iSCI 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1122))

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Abstract

The advent of the Bitcoin blockchain as a peer-to-peer, open, and decentralized financial system has empowered millions of people globally to make transactions without any trusted third parties. This realization leads to the birth of more than 2300 cryptocurrencies in the last decade. Despite this evolvement, the Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are facing many challenges right now. Facebook’s Libra is a new kind of cryptocurrency built on the foundation of blockchain technology conceived by Libra Association - twenty-eight high-profile governing members that will work together to create a more inclusive financial system using consortium blockchain technology. The goal of the Libra is to serve as a solid foundation for a highly scalable, frictionless, and traceable global financial systems with extremely high transactions rate. However, the proposed Libra cryptocurrency has yet to face many issues. In this paper, we critically analyzed the status of the Libra, its underlying concept, and the challenges faced by it once launched as a global decentralized financial system. Currently, the proposed Libra is very ambiguous with uncertain goals and intentions. In particular, we explored the placement technology of Libra, which is not very much well define in comparison with Bitcoin and other public blockchains which are fully decentralized, transparent, borderless and fully open for transparency. Also, we explore the security and privacy features of Libra concerning around three-billion user base of Facebook social media ecosystem (i.e., Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61632009, in part by the Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation under Grant 2017A030308006, and in part by the High-Level Talents Program of Higher Education in Guangdong Province under Grant 2016ZJ01.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, 510006, China

    Saqib Ali & Guojun Wang

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, 38000, Pakistan

    Saqib Ali & Komal Fatima

  3. Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, P.O. Box 4349, Menlo Park, CA, 94309, USA

    Bebo White

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  1. Saqib Ali
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  2. Guojun Wang
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  4. Komal Fatima
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guojun Wang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

    Guojun Wang

  2. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Abdulmotaleb El Saddik

  3. Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Xuejia Lai

  4. University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Gregorio Martinez Perez

  5. The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo

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Ali, S., Wang, G., White, B., Fatima, K. (2019). Libra Critique Towards Global Decentralized Financial System. In: Wang, G., El Saddik, A., Lai, X., Martinez Perez, G., Choo, KK. (eds) Smart City and Informatization. iSCI 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1122. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1301-5_52

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1301-5_52

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-15-1300-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-15-1301-5

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