Katharina Pistor shares her views on Facebook’s Libra

During the Libra hearings in Washington DC, Legal expert Katharina Pistor said, "You can’t put the genie back into the bottle." Pistor, the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School, explored the legality and the significance of corporate tokens like Libra in a world that seems inhibited towards it. 

On July 17, at the House Financial Services Committee, Pistor said: 

"Facebook’s Libra is designed to become a new global currency that will complement existing fiat currencies. It is designed as a for-profit currency of currencies." Later, she went on to describe Libra as a “concentration of power… unmatched by any meaningful accountability to anyone.”

Pistor stated that Libra could only be possible because of the regulatory infrastructure that already supports fiat currency. Similar to how treasury bills and bank deposits are guarded by the reputation and "full faith of the United States behind them," Libra would be ingratiated in the financial ecosystem. 
 
She feels that because of Libra's streamlined and "elegant" design, it "could eliminate a lot of things. It could be a lot cheaper. It could just be a much better system for many customers.” Ultimately, Pistor wants to know “whether the central banks could actually offer something that’s more attractive?” She concluded, “I think the really important question is what is the benefit of doing it through a private agent rather than a public agent."