The uncertainty around the planned launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Libra, this year, may just have had a spike stabbed into its heart by the company’s head, Mark Zuckerberg. The well-known CEO has outlined his 2030 plans and in that there is not a single mention of Libra.

Libra’s struggles against global regulators have been well documented, but there are still assertions that there will be some sort of launch of the cryptocurrency this year. Libra has been slated in Europe and especially in the US, but has also been preemptively banned in places like India and China.

Zuckerberg outlined his vision for the next 10 years from Facebook and while no mention of Libra was suspicious, it was the fact that he was still happy to include financial services of some kind in the speech that really seemed to outline just where Libra’s fate is.

A new Libra-like project?

It could well be that Facebook has realized that they overshot the mark by trying to bring something like Libra to almost a third of the world’s population south first getting their foundations right. Libra is a good idea, but perhaps the world is not ready, and Libra is also not ready to be unleashed.

For Zuckerberg, he is still talking about finance, Facebook and decentralizing it.

“Over the next decade, we hope to build the commerce and payments tools so that every small business has easy access to the same technology that previously only big companies have had,” Zuckerberg said in the post.

That vision includes Instagram storefronts, Messenger-based customer support, remittances via WhatsApp – technologies that Facebook has already been pursuing. Zuckerberg hopes his company’s efforts will “go a long way towards creating more opportunities around the world.”

A small oversight?

Reading between the lines on a relatively short post for a 10-year outline may be a little critical of Facebook and its plans. It may well be that Libra did not make the post for a number of other reasons.

Libra is not primarily a Facebook project, in fact, it is not even a sole Calibra project as there are 20-odd consortium members looking to bring Libra to life and Facebook has said it will be hands-off in regards to this project.

More so, Zuckerberg has spoken about the future of other technologies – such as Virtual Reality – but he does not go on to discuss just how Facebook’s Oculus subsidiary fits into the vision.