Ripple CEO Thinks Facebook Libra Will Be Delayed For At Least 3 Years

With several impediments coming from regulation and now backers dropping out, Facebook's Libra may not come through with its 2020 launch, and Ripple's CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, certainly thinks that's true.

Garlinghouse spoke to Fortune Magazine and expressed his doubts about the social media giant's proposed cryptocurrency.

"I would bet that Libra...let's say, by the end of 2022, I think Libra will not have launched," Garlinghouse said on Fortune's "Balancing the Ledger."

To Garlinghouse, the major roadblock to getting Libra off the ground is regulation, and the heightened scrutiny over regulators is due mainly to its privacy debacle last year.

Regulation
In France, the Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, plans to block Libra in the EU, telling Telegraph last month that, "the monetary sovereignty of states is under threat." Germany agreed with France to pursue the same action against Libra.

In the U.S., crypto projects must comply with strict regulatory standards. Sigal Mandelker, U.S. Under Secretary of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said, "whether it's bitcoin, Ethereum, Libra, our message is the same to all of these companies: anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism has to be built into your design from the get-go."

Backers backing out
Paypal, one of Libra's backers, has abandoned the Libra project on Monday but stated that they remain supportive of the stable coin. Visa and Mastercard, two firms that have initially signed in to help with Libra's payment network, are also reconsidering their involvement.

The target audience irony
Libra is Facebook's stake for a low-cost way to move money around digitally and globally -- the target audience is those without bank accounts.

"1.7 billion adults globally remain outside of the financial system with no access to a traditional bank, even though one billion have a mobile phone and nearly half a billion have internet access," according to Libra's whitepaper.

However, three out of the seven countries that have no access to bank accounts have banned Facebook on and off, and that could make introducing a financial element tied with their services difficult. China, one of those seven countries, has block Facebook since 2009.

Garlinghouse isn't confident with Libra's future, "I think it's going to be a tough road."