Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game
&gt; The largest leap will come last: Libra as a genuine currency, not simply a medium for transaction. This will be function of volume in the previous two use cases, and is understandably concerning to governments all over the world.<p>Well that&#x27;s certainly an understatement.<p>This is literally the only mention of government through-out the entire article. The only mention of banks is in the previous paragraph stating there are no banks in the coalition.<p>Banks and governments go together like peas and carrots, they also control pretty much everything and have for hundreds and thousands of years.  This control is derived from a few places, but primarily from a monopoly on the control of the currency and the monopoly on coercive force.<p>No government is going to let FB and any coalition do an end run around their national currency and their banking institutions. They&#x27;re also not going to partner with an international consortium to have them replaced with something they only partially control.<p>I really don&#x27;t know why this isn&#x27;t a larger part of this conversation.  I think people need to be cracking more history books and less William Gibson and Neil Stephenson novels.