Libra co-founder defends Libra on Twitter

David Marcus is the co-founder of Libra and hosts an impressive CV of startups including Facebook Messenger and PayPal.

Today Facebook and Goldman Sachs and around twenty central bank officials Benoît Coeuré said: “the bar for regulatory approval will be very high”. 

In response over a series of tweets David Marcus said:

Tweet 1: About monetary sovereignty of Nations vs. Libra:

Tweet 2: Recently there's been a lot of talk about how Libra could threaten the sovereignty of Nations when it comes to money. I wanted to take the opportunity to debunk that notion.

Tweet 3:Libra is designed to be a better payment network and system running on top of existing currencies, and delivering meaningful value to consumers all around the world.

Tweet 4:Libra will be backed 1:1 by a basket of strong currencies. This means that for any unit of Libra to exist, there must be the equivalent value in its reserve.

Tweet 5:As such there's no new money creation, which will strictly remain the province of sovereign Nations.

Tweet 6:We also believe strong regulatory oversight preventing the Libra Association from deviating from its full 1:1 backing commitment is desirable.

Tweet 7:We will continue to engage with Central Banks, Regulators, and lawmakers to ensure we address their concerns through Libra's design and operations.

Tweet 8:Separately, I'm looking forward to the Libra Association taking on full leadership of the project soon after its charter has been ratified so I can focus on building calibra

I still think this does not destabilise rumours that Libra is a threat to traditional finance. Once people realise that they can send funds through Facebook all the other currencies become less liquid. This is the issue, fewer deposits, fewer savings accounts. I believe this is what central banks are worried about.