Investing.com Poll: Would You Use Facebook’s Libra Coin?

For our latest social media weekly poll, which ran both on Investing.com’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, we asked our users:

Would You Use Facebook’s Libra Coin?

In case you missed it, Facebook announced plans last month to launch a new global cryptocurrency called Libra. It is planned to launch by the end of June 2020.

The currency is managed by the Libra network, co-founded by several companies in both the payments and tech industries. To facilitate transactions, Facebook also created a new subsidiary called Calibra that will offer digital wallets for Libra.

Facebook has a really bad reputation for a lot of reasons. Will people really trust them with their finances and hand over control of their money to Mark Zuckerberg, especially in light of revelations last year that U.K.-based Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed 87 million Facebook users’ data?

Breaking Down The Results:

In a not-so-surprising outcome, the poll results revealed that most would not consider using Facebook’s new digital currency.

Overall, when taking votes from both Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) into account, 75.5% of users voted that there is no chance they would use Libra Coin.

Only 24.5% said they would opt to use the new digital coin and trust Facebook with their finances.

Facebook

Out of the 1,300 votes recorded on Facebook, 984 users, or 75%, said they would not use Libra Coin.

In contrast, just 335 users, or about 25%, voted that they would give it a try.

Twitter

The results we saw on Investing.com’s Twitter account echoed the same sentiment.

Of the 292 votes recorded, 222 users, or around 76%, said there is no chance they would use Libra Coin.

Meanwhile, only 70 users, or 24%, said they would use it.

Behind the Numbers:

Behind the Numbers:

According to a 2018 survey of 1,000 adults by personal-finance site MagnifyMoney, 91% of respondents not surprisingly said they wouldn’t trust Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) to handle their payments.

Facebook says the launch of Libra is part of an effort to not only expand into digital payments, but also to offer unbanked consumers in underprivileged countries access to financial services for the first time. However, the end goal Facebook eventually has in mind for Libra is to integrate the digital currency into everyday transactions, such as paying bills, purchasing a cup of coffee or paying for public transportation.

That would allow the world’s biggest social media network, which has over 2 billion users, to combine a customer’s transaction data with their social interactions and potentially sell it to the highest bidder.

It is for this reason precisely that global regulators have already sounded the alarm over Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, with U.S. lawmakers calling for Facebook to halt development while the concept is investigated.