David Marcus And His Calibrated Efforts to Save Libra

David Marcus, who is associated with Libra, was born in France, grew up in Paris and Geneva, and had been interested in technologies from his early years. At 23, he established his first company, internet provider GTN, which he sold later.

Now David Marcus is the head of Calibra, Facebook’s subsidiary and the official wallet provider for Libra cryptocurrency. He headed messanging products at Facebook and was a board member of Coinbase in 2018. Before that, Marcus was the president at PayPal when the Zong payments startup he founded in 2018 was acquired by the financial services behemoth.

Libra appearing on the stage

In the end of 2018, Marcus caught attention of crypto community with Facebook’s move to create its own cryptocurrency, as he was reportedly heading the initiative. When Libra project was officially announced, Marcus began to appear in the news frequently, either trying to dispel doubts about the project or assuring people about its future.

In July 2019, Marcus became a crucial figure as he was called in by the United States Congress for two hearings on consecutive days in order to respond to the lawmakers’ abrupt criticisms.

Before the hearings, Marcus wrote a letter to Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters — who summoned Facebook to Capitol Hill earlier — in which he stated that Calibra and Libra Association would collaborate with the lawmakers. Marcus said:

“I want to give you my personal assurance that we are committed to taking the time to do this right.”

At the hearings before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Marcus had to answer some difficult questions. The debates, which he described as “thoughtful” on Twitter, showed that the lawmakers did not buy into Libra, which was obvious when the price of Bitcoin (BTC) went down following the event.

Bitcoin price declining on July 16 and 17. Source: Coin360

The next day Marcus talked to even harsher audience, as he answered questions of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman finally called CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to the Hill, apparently dissatisfied with Marcus had to say.

Strengthening the position

On September 25, David Marcus wrote a lengthy blog post detailing the advantages a blockchain-based payment system such as Libra may have over traditional systems. He maintained, that “the existing ‘money networks’ are closed and are not well interconnected,” thus being inefficient. They also need large liquidity pools and the involvement of numerous intermediaries.

In conclusion Marcus stated that he sees Libra way as ambitious, since it differs from the traditional systems’ ways. He once again said that he is eager to bring the idea to life, partially in an attempt to reassure the project’s stakeholders that Facebook is not hindered by the regulatory pushback:

“This is why we’ve decided to take the more ambitious route, and why we’re so committed to seeing it through.”

In a series of tweets in early October, Marcus reassured the community about Libra’s security, availability of information and readiness of association members to support the project even in difficult times. One tweet said:

“The tone of some of this reporting suggests angst, etc… I can tell you that we’re very calmly, and confidently working through the legitimate concerns that Libra has raised by bringing conversations about the value of digital currencies to the forefront.”

On October 14, Marcus became a member of the board of directors of the Libra Association, representing Facebook. Other members were Kiva Microfunds, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Xapo Holdings Limited and PayU.

Several days later, Marcus said in an interview, that he has been watching Bitcoin since 2012 and that he is strongly enthusiastic about it, believing that it is digital gold, which also means that it is not a currency in his books.

He clarified that BTC is nothing like Libra, and that if the successful token were a stable currency, he would be working on introducing it to the Calibra wallet instead of inventing a new cryptocurrency.

On October 20, it became obvious what Marcus was driving at, as it was reported that the Libra cryptocurrency will be backed by a pool of stablecoins representing national currencies, noting, “That is one of the options that should be considered.”

At the end of October 2019, Marcus stated that AML and KYC procedures will be much stricter on the Libra network than anywhere else. It is unclear if this was a dig at other cryptocurrencies or an attempt to silence critics who claimed that Libra will face the same privacy issues as Facebook in the past.

During the Money 20/20 event, Marcus noted, “I want to say that the efficacy of sanction enforcing can be much higher on Libra than other payments networks.” He went on to add that authorities will be able to track malicious actors on the network, providing one more hint into how Libra might operate:

“The open ledger — the blockchain — enables regulators to look at what is happening themselves and identify where the risk is without relying on reports.”

On November 7, Marcus said that the Calibra wallet and Facebook will not share or intermingle data, adding:

“We have built very strong firewalls between Calibra and Facebook in such a way that if you’re on the Facebook side, no one can have access to that data.”

Finally, Marcus confirmed that in order to ensure separate operation of the two companies, their relationship could be audited to ensure user trust in the crypto platform. In the same interview, Marcus also said what many had believed before: he was expecting scrutiny as soon as Libra was unveiled.

All in all

We should note that in spite of the fact that David Marcus is making headlines for Libra, he is the one of the few who speak on behalf of crypto, especially before the U.S. lawmakers. Nevertheless, one of his most-liked tweets is the one about Tesla’s Cybertruck rather than his own cryptocurrency — which may indicate that Libra still needs to gain popularity in 2020.