Economic Historian: “Libra Will Never See The Light Of Day”

“Libra Will Never See The Light Of Day,” Monetary Historian Says

UC Berkeley economic historian Barry Eichengreen states that Facebook’s planned Libra stablecoin has too many “insoluble” issues, and faces too much resistance from governments, to ever launch.

“Libra is an interesting idea that will never see the light of day,” he told the Unitize conference on July 10.

Eichengreen stresses that the stablecoin sector is largely ignorant of monetary economics and history. He said his economic work has led to invitations “to a series of lunches at excellent San Francisco restaurants with the founders and funders of prospective stablecoins.”

“My conclusion was that my luncheon companions knew all about blockchain, but they didn’t know much about monetary economics,” Eichengreen said, stressing they’d been unaware of past speculative attacks on pegged exchange rates.

Eichengreen noted:

“Stablecoins are either fragile — they are prone to attack and collapse if they are only partially backed or collateralized with actual dollars or dollar bank balances, or they are prohibitively expensive to scale-up if they are, in fact, fully or over-collateralized.”

Stablecoin proponents naive

While many analysts think that Libra can disrupt the existing financial system, Eichengreen disagrees and notes that despite releasing a second whitepaper this year, “Facebook’s private label stablecoin” remains plagued by various “insoluble” issues.

The economic historian said there are concerns that Libra will “undermine the effectiveness of national monetary policies” in both emerging and developing states, adding that citizens in countries with volatile fiat currencies will abandon their local money in favor of a globally accepted “Libra dollar.”

Libra’s planned over-collateralization of its stable token, leads the scholar to forecast the excess backing will be ensured with transaction fees. But as high fees hamper adoption, Eichengreen predicts that “fees are going to be kept low, rais[ing] questions about the adequacy of the capital buffer.”

A Libra central bank?

The economist also says that “Libra is going to need a central bank, in effect, if the markets that grow up around it are going to be stable,” alluding to the predicted rise of derivatives linked to the stablecoin.

“National governments are going to be queasy about the creation of a private, Facebook-owned and operated central bank,” he added.

“So there are some very big uncertainties, I think, that would have to be resolved in order for this creation to get off the ground, and my conclusion remains that some of those problems are insoluble.”