The reaction in June 2019 to the announcement of Facebook’s planned “stablecoin" was immediate and almost universally negative, owing both to the half-baked quality of the proposal and negative perceptions of the parent company. But while neither problem has been fixed, it may no longer matter: central banks and other more experienced private entities are taking the digital-payments baton.
BERKELEY – Talk about “techlash.” The reaction last June to the announcement of Facebook’s planned “stablecoin,” Libra, was nothing short of neck-snapping. (I plead guilty to having engaged in some snapping, or sniping, myself.) That reaction reflected negative perceptions of the parent company. There were fears that Facebook would exploit consumers’ dependence on Libra to harvest data on their use of it and sell or deploy the data in its own interest, say, to drive additional traffic to its platform.
BERKELEY – Talk about “techlash.” The reaction last June to the announcement of Facebook’s planned “stablecoin,” Libra, was nothing short of neck-snapping. (I plead guilty to having engaged in some snapping, or sniping, myself.) That reaction reflected negative perceptions of the parent company. There were fears that Facebook would exploit consumers’ dependence on Libra to harvest data on their use of it and sell or deploy the data in its own interest, say, to drive additional traffic to its platform.