Libra, Facebook, and the Evolution of Cryptocurrency: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
Co-hosted by the Stanford Center for Professional Development
Is government sponsored fiat money doomed? Are central bankers about to be rendered irrelevant? Can regulators and government agencies such as the US Treasury Department, the US SEC, and the IRS assert any practical control over cryptocurrency innovations like Libra? Or is this non-state sponsored crypto-evolution all hype that will, ultimately, be reduced to a blip in the grand scheme of the global monetary system and mainly remembered for blunders, fraud, and regulatory confusion?
Facebook has promised to launch a more stable and useful “next generation” cryptocurrency in 2020 that will be backed by a basket of reserves comprised of US dollars, euros, Japanese yen, the British pound, and the Singapore dollar. In response, UK politician’s claim that Libra represents Facebook’s latest attempt to "turn itself into its own country” and French finance minister Bruno Le Maire claims that Libra’s emergence threatens the “monetary sovereignty” of European nation states. Regulatory response elsewhere (including the United States) has ranged from cautious to highly critical. Popular response has run the full spectrum from jubilation on the part of crypto-enthusiasts to fear from the more wary.
But corporate momentum seems to be building in favor of Libra. PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and others have partnered with Facebook and other financial institutions to develop and roll out Libra to Facebook's billions of users worldwide. IBM has formally signaled an intent to work collaboratively with Facebook to enhance the legitimacy of this and related blockchain projects. All evidence indicates that Libra will arrive in full force sometime in 2020.
Does this new “global digital currency” mark the beginning of a new phase in the evolution of cryptocurrency? Will individual countries be able to effectively block this technology, as many have announced? What impact will the launch of Libra have on other cryptocurrencies? Will global currency markets be impacted? How will regulators respond? Where and how will money be made (or lost) around these developments? How will corporations respond?
Join Stanford Professor and former SEC Commissioner Joe Grundfest, one of the world’s leading experts in cryptocurrency and related regulatory matters, in a conversation about Libra and the future of cryptocurrency.
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