Facebook’s work-in-progress cryptocurrency due for launch next year may be called Libra, which may or may not symbolically be helpful given Libras propensity for chucking money around extravagantly. Or maybe that’s the hope.
It could unlock a new era of commerce offering low or no-fee payments between friends or remittance of earnings to families from migrant workers abroad who are often gouged by money transfer services. If it sidestepped credit card transaction fees it would be a cheaper way to pay merchants for traditional ecommerce, or facilitate microtransactions for a la carte news articles or tipping of content creators.
Not everyone is enamoured of the idea. US economist Joseph Stiglitz writing in the Guardian today says: “Only a fool would trust Facebook with their financial wellbeing.” And he says it could prove problematic over money laundering.
The Facebook IPO chart, 18 May 2012 11.31am New York, does look on buoyant form in 2020/2021 with tr Pluto trine the Jupiter, moving on to trine the Sun/Jupiter midpoint the two years after that. Though it won’t be an easy run-up with Neptune and Pluto in transit blocking progress on several fronts this year till late 2020.
The original Facebook chart, 4 February 2004, is in a curious phase – stuck at the moment with Solar Arc Pluto opposition the Saturn; in the start of a long run of Neptunian high-hopes not all of which will pay dividends as it moves round the T Square of Jupiter opposition Venus square Pluto from 2019 till late 2023. With a major upheaval in 2020 from Solar Arc Sun conjunct Uranus; and a disruptive, total turnaround Solar Arc Uranus square Pluto in 2023.
Mark Zuckerburg, 14 May 1984 (time unverified) is a stalwartly determined Sun Venus in Taurus opposition Mars (Moon) and Saturn in Scorpio. He’s also moving into an oddly unsettled phase with tr Neptune square his Mars/Jupiter midpoint and conjunct his Sun/Jupiter midpoint this year and next – both of which suggest dented enthusiasm and dashed hopes. With a catastrophic tr Uranus opposition his Mars/Pluto midpoint from mid 2020 into 2021 when he picks up a longish run of jangled tr Uranus hard aspects first in opposition to his Saturn, then conjunct his Venus, opposition Mars and finally conjunct his Sun all before Uranus moves into Gemini in late 2025. In 2022 as well he has his Solar Arc Sun opposition his Neptune which will make him untypically confused or distracted.
Charts as fixed as his don’t appreciate Uranian transits on the whole since they require adaptation to change, though they do favour IT and high technology.
Whatever happens Facebook and Zuckerburg look to be having their existence turned upside down in the first half of the 2020s.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/02/why-facebook-libra-currency-gets-the-thumbs-down
Any thoughts that Facebook has lost $60 Billion and more since Unilever and Verizon
announced they were pulling their advertising?
Zuckerburg having a controlling interest in a worldwide currency that will be in the hands of more people than the combined populations of China and India? “In Zuck We Trust”?