As a long-time follower of digital currencies, while I have some skepticism about Libra (and see plenty of opportunities for competition), it's hard to take an

As a long-time follower of digital currencies, while I have some skepticism about Libra (and see plenty of opportunities for competition), it's hard to take an editorial like this seriously when it's making such terrible arguments. The piece starts by claiming that Facebook is profiting from Libra by collecting one-time fees from participants, and that this would somehow be motivation to launch the endeavor. This is so wholly wrong that my head spins a bit at this - the Libra Association members pay in $10M (which gives them a single vote, and "Libra Investment Tokens"), and the cash goes to support 1:1 backing into the Libra Reserve - while there may be a float, the return is basically de minimas since it's basically going into short term treasuries and the like. Considering these funds are controlled by the association (a Geneva non-profit) and that all members have equal voting right, I don't see how there's any way that Facebook Inc (or any individual member) could actually make a "cool billion dollars" in any way from this. Either this argument was made from not taking a few minutes to make a cursory read any of the website announcements or white papers, or is, I don't know, pure imagination? The second argument is less bewildering, but shows even less understanding of what kind of play Libra is. It imagines that somehow FB will benefit (as a 1/100th investor in the LA) from transaction fees! If the goal were to maximize tx fees from a payment system within FB properties, they'd have been much better off launching a first party payment system (the same is true if the only goal was for collection of transaction data, btw). Sure FB wants to make money from Libra, but it'll be by creating exactly what it says on a tin - an open access, low friction, cross-border, transactional digital currency. FB benefits from opening up huge markets in (especially) its EM marketplace, which has been largely underserved by er everyone, and by creating new markets (microtransactions, small international transfers) that have been simply impossible without a true "internet" currency. Of course there won't be any privacy, but this IMO is driven as much by KYC/AML/global money flow of sovereign interests, as much as for consumer data mining purposes. We know how to make private cryptocurrencies, but it'd simply be DOA if that were what were proposed to any regulatory authority around the world. IMO FB has pushed the conversation forward in a good way and I'd say that it's up to everyone else (whether its competing national or corporate consortiums, or open-source/independent cryptocurrency projects) to step up and offer some better alternative. For those arguing that this should simply be stopped (or for the status quo of how money and banking currently work globally, which I personally think is much worse than what Libra promises), well, I guess at the very least, argue better.