Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project

Here's the issue, well my issue. I've read more than enough history to know what happens with company currency or scrip. It doesn't have to be the mining town paying the miner in mining dollars to use at a variable rate solely at the overpriced mining store, valid only whilst they work at the mine and don't upset the foreman or his wife. Each step and use gave opportunity, gladly taken, for the mine to extract more profit.

Currency regulators permit local dollars and pounds which are an attempt to keep money in a local economy. Their constraint is fair to both the public and the market, they are purely parallel to cash, and they are tiny enough not to matter - crucially there is no profit in and of themselves. A "local California dollar" might well deservedly get a different reaction.

With Libra, well it's not hard to create a Company Scrip 2.0 scenario. In fact it's disturbingly easy. Actually, to imagine dozens upon dozens of them. Then a few dozen more purely because it's supra-national. Then a few dozen more because they are large enough to squeeze out cash without needing to be a remote company town. Yeah actually I want regulators to squish that before birth, with extreme malice.

Just one example: Facebook and Ford do a deal for FB advertising and a bit of personal data swapping, in return for Ford F150s, or maybe just a particular model to start, solely being available for Libra. You want that Ford truck, well convert some dollars into Libra. You don't see how it's disturbingly easy to create an inevitable and easily manipulated stronghold down that route? What about if the local supermarket does the same deal? Breach the licence, well you're not shopping in these stores... Even stealing universal currencies, such as dollars, does not remove your future use of or right to use dollars. Only the stolen loot is taken from you.

I'm perfectly comfortable with the anarchistic cryptocurrencies such as BTC as there is no threat to the universality of exchange, even if it did take off more than BTC yet has. Even though BTC's main use seems as medium of speculation until the bubble bursts. They can reasonably be a currency. Libra feels more universality of control than of exchange.

A currency as product - that's inherently a bad thing, as I wrote in my other reply. Even if the company is not Facebook but is behind the crypto currency alone, with a built in route to profit just by the "currency" existing. That's diametrically opposed to the needs of a currency - a universal token of exchange and legal tender. It rather removes the ability to be a currency. It should not be a product in and of itself. I expect, and pray, that regulators will erase any that have chance of becoming widespread enough to be real alternative currency beyond speculative toy. Otherwise everyone except shareholders is worse off. Now a central bank backing a cryptocurrency - held as universal and legal tender - that's an entirely different, and interesting thing.

you should check out "online" banks like Charles Schwab. they don't do any of this fancy retail bs. they've never charged me a fee (not even when I overdrew my checking account), and they reimburse me the full ATM fee whenever I use one, no matter how bad it is.

the only thing they "upsell" you on is their trading platform, which is quite good imo. they have a bunch of great inhouse ETFs and it's now free to trade other stuff anyway.

Universality and confidence came long, long before the 19th century gold standard - to the early Middle Ages and beyond, a state, or king, set the purity of coin, the penalty for clipping, mutilating the coin and so on. The gold standard developed from, and long after coinage standard and assaying.

Again in the early ME, particularly during the Viking age, and with some overlap with coin, people used hacksilver and similar as preferred medium of exchange because there was inherent value to the commodity. Hacksilver goes long back into the dim and distant ancient past, beyond other universal coins and currencies that achieved confidence, such as Roman. So yes, it was the ultimate - and very effective - hedge, particularly as towns fell, were raided or found themselves repeatedly changing side.

Of course government can abuse rates, but the scope is amplified orders of magnitude with a Company Scrip. Libra is a company scrip that risks destabilising proper currencies, and creating islands of inclusion and exclusion. By contrast, BTC is not, and does not. The difference in regulatory response seems clear, and warranted.

Choice is what some cryptocurrencies bring - the anarchistic ones. Even there I see little to no chance of surpassing central bank backed currencies - that's just a pipe dream. Of the corporate backed cryptocurrencies, the "with profit" currencies, they're simply Company Scrip, and an entirely different species apart.