THE LIBRA DREAM: WILL IT BECOME REALITY? Cryptocurrencies

摘要

The announcement that Facebook - along with 27 other organisations including Uber, Spotify, eBay and Booking.com - was planning to launch a global cryptocurrency, called Libra, in the first half of 2020 sent a shockwave through regulators, supervisors, policy-makers, finance ministers and central bankers across the world. The ability to flick a switch and enable more than 2 billion people to transact on a global level outside the traditional financial system, effectively bypassing banks and other payment providers, is a game changer for the financial industry. US Federal Reserve chairman Jay Powell and Bank of England (BoE) governor Mark Carney both remarked on the Libra coin's potential to become immediately systemically important.