Perhaps we should also be asking what of Libra itself right now?
Well, still the ups and downs of Libra keep on coming - for the last eight months or so it’s had to survive a pretty heavy onslaught of negativity, possibly deservedly so.
Like a semi-punch drunk middleweight this ‘Freedom Currency’ survives the round, seemingly gets saved by the bell only to be faced with more of the same resistance in the next round.
Back in late July 2019 we had Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, openly criticising what he called Silicon Valley arrogance surrounding the Libra roll out. In a further interview with Forbes in October 2019 again he held nothing back as he opined that " If I were a betting man, I would take an Augur bet… I think there’s a time-based element on Augur as well, so I’ll say… the end of 2022, I think Libra will not have launched”.
In December 2019 we had the President of Switzerland, Ueli Maurer, quoted in Reuters declaring his strong disapproval of Libra and that the “…Libra project has failed in its current form and needs reworking to be approved….I don’t think (Libra has a chance in its current form), because central banks will not accept the basket of currencies underpinning it…” .
Then earlier this year, in January, it was announced that the Libra Association had lost the eighth company as Vodaphone the UK telecom giant withdrew. Previously we had heard that eBay, Booking Holdings Inc, Mercado Pago, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and PayPal had all decided to leave the project.
Perhaps tellingly, from an interview with the Financial Times in February, the Indian-American business executive currently president and chief executive officer of Mastercard, Ajaypal “Ajay” Singh Banga revealed that his company had pulled out after their diligence exposed issues regarding compliance and overall business model questions.
He was also greatly concerned that there was an apparent resistance by other members of the Libra Association to sign up to data management controls, anti-money laundering controls and client identity verification processes.
As a small counterweight to all these negative stories, finally in February 2020 we had the US Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, acknowledging the potential power of digital currencies as he appeared to single out Libra, the announcement of which he labelled a “ wake-up call ” for the United States, whilst discussing cryptocurrencies as part of his testimony to Congress.
What some could interpret as further positives for Libra, on February 21st we had Shopify announce that it was to become part of the Libra Association and again on February 26th Tagomi Tweeted that they too were joining the Libra Association- "We’re excited to become a member of @Libra_, sharing a common mission to expand financial inclusion. We believe the Libra project is poised to create a simple, inclusive, and global payment system that will empower billions of people left out of the global economy."
So for what it’s worth, my money would still be on Mr Z pulling something out of the bag if only to save face. He’s never struck me as someone to walk away at a few signs of adversity - he certainly has the financial clout to move forward with Libra, it’s just a question of whether he can reach a release date in a timely enough manner to achieve his undoubted global identity acquisition goals.
Will it endanger the economy - it could have in its initial format, but given the continuing scrutiny it will bear I doubt very much whether it will be allowed to by “those that know and hold the real power!”