Was Facebook's Libra a Copy of an MIT Researcher's Thesis? The Author of the Paper Points Out

According to Coindesk, Alexander Lipton, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's research institute Connection Science and a non-starter professor at NYU, said Facebook is copying the concepts his research thesis.

Lipton said he published an essay titled "Digital Trade Coin:Towards a More Stable Digital Currency" in 2018 and expressed that although he isn't fuming, Libra's whitepaper is a concept from a research by Sandy Pentlan and Thomas Hardjono. He described as the idea was stolen.

He then suggested some of the same ideas in the early edition of Sandy Pentlan's paper, which was on U.S. Journal Scientific America, that the concept was never mentioned in the white paper of Libra.

Lipton also acknowledged the difference in detail, although the White Paper idea was similar. Three authors, including Lipton, explained in their paper that "Digital Trade Coin (DTC)" is an asset-backed-oriented cryptocurrency, and will probably be backed by traditional goods.

For example, depending on funding and ability, sponsors can be supported by petroleum, gold (gold), nonmetallic (steel, copper, aluminum, etc.), and agricultural products. Given the difficulties and costs of storing these considerable amounts, it is natural to use the already stored collateral and become a product that generates profits without waste.

Meanwhile, Libra's publisher, the Libra Association, admitted that the paper does not contain methods. "We have assumed producers of raw materials, transnational organizations and, in some cases, two to three large settlement operators, but it is clear that there is no such thing as Uber."

Others point out that the concept of Libra is similar to that of Libra. Etherium-related media, "Ethereum World News" on June 22nd cited the distributed DLT project, Hedera Hashgraph. Hedera Hashgraph claims that the Libra Association's governance model is a copy of the Hedera Hashgraph Steering Review.

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