Perspective: There’s a Lot We Still Don’t Know About Libra

Friday, November 8, 2019

By Saule Omarova and 

Dr. Omarova is a professor of law at Cornell University and Mr. Steele is the director of the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 

Last month, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spent over five grueling hours answering myriad questions from the members of the House Financial Services Committee on issues like election interference, hate speech, censorship and discriminatory advertising. While it was an important reminder of the many dangers that Facebook already presents to our society, we didn’t actually learn much about the hearing’s ostensible topic: Facebook’s audacious plan to create an association of big businesses to issue a new digital currency called Libra.

It makes sense that elected representatives would steer their questioning toward topics readily relatable to the daily experiences of the voting public. But it’s important that we understand Libra’s many profound economic implications, especially since it appears that Facebook executives still fail to appreciate (or are intent on obscuring) them.

Source: The New York Times (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Finance, Technology
Tags
cryptocurrency, fintech