Governance, Regulation and Macro-Economic Impact

Libra: A balanced view- I

Company scrip writ large

Libra from the wishing bridge in old Jaffa

Introduction

All media is agog with Libra news this week. Regulators who are normally cautious, have rushed into the fray as well. The entry of FaceBook and its partners (willing or otherwise) into the crypto-coin universe has created a breathless series of stories; boosting the concept or deriding it. This is to be expected, as the scale of the potential market is enormous. Two odd billion users of Facebook apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, core Facebook plus customers of their partners are the potential network. This could be half the population of the planet.

This is not a new phenomenon, from the link in the sub-title it can be seen that private scrips were introduced for various purposes in America and elsewhere by corporations. It was to deal with geographic seclusion and the unavailability of cash. Company scrip also became a way to control and enslave employees and merchants. The fungibility of the scrip and its liquidity were the most vulnerable features of the older models. These concerns continue to be raised in the commentaries on Libra. Today, in addition, we have M-Pesa, Paytm, WeChat and Ant Financial payment systems that are comparable in scale and operable through…