Facebook, Libra, and the Long Game
I can&#x27;t help but think that Facebook doomed this &quot;distributed ledger&quot; possibility by trying to be first to market with a tarnished brand.<p>The developing world would hugely benefit from a scalable technology that can efficiently service digital transactions. The piece demonstrates this with how quickly WeChat Pay and Alipay penetrated China.<p>I can&#x27;t imagine the possibility for prosperity when 3 billion consumers enter the global economy in a matter of years.<p>Alternative currencies were always going to have to compete (or at least deal with) with powerful governments, and all the most powerful governments are most easily manipulated by appealing to a mass audience.<p>The Facebook brand isn&#x27;t capable of doing that right now. There&#x27;s far more incentive for politicians to talk about breaking Facebook up than to encourage Facebook to embed itself in the financial lives of their constituents.<p>If a decision is made to breakup Facebook, spinning off Libra will be right at the top of the list. I can&#x27;t see how it survives as a stand-alone technology without the support of Facebook&#x27;s network effects.