I agree with the key insight here. Light touches of financial regulation (written by their lobbyists, in the most cynical case) will help Facebook immensely if

I agree with the key insight here. Light touches of financial regulation (written by their lobbyists, in the most cynical case) will help Facebook immensely if they become a social payments platform. If you want to pay your rent or split that bill with your friends using Libra, it seems reasonable that you might first need to do some Airbnb/fintech style identity validation with their friendly automated systems. Just a photo of your ID and a brief video, and you can have your Libra balance within 15 minutes. And, just like that, Facebook has gained: - a real identity to associate with that tracking pixel - an extension of their network effects even further into the real-world, where you then need to maintain a (validated) account to participate in many common social transactions. It has the potential to both slow the exodus of millennials and tie a slew of real identities to their accounts. If later on they get transaction data (I agree that this seems inevitable, weren't Google already buying it from CC companies?) or their currency grows to dwarf the dollar in global utility that's just icing on the cake. For now, their model is still collecting valid + valuable personal data, then selling access to cohorts, and this plays right into that.