Mark Zuckerberg “I believe it should be as easy to send money to someone as it is to send a photo.” Facebook has announced plans to launch a new global currency powered by blockchain technology called Libra with a . These include Visa, PayPal, eBay, Spotify, Uber, and Vodafone. consortium of industry founding members Libra aims to allow people to send, receive, spend, and secure their money, enabling a more inclusive global financial system. Libra is a fully backed by a reserve of real assets. The borrows heavily from the economics, technology, and narrative of the blockchain revolutionaries. Each member of the consortium will have their own goals, but here I focus on what this might mean for Facebook now and in the longer-term. stablecoin white-paper Reactions to Libra have spread faster than a ‘fake-news Kardashian meme’ on Facebook. This is not just the launch of new software, but a new currency to rival the Dollar, Pound, and Euro. Many articles have dug deep and cast the net out far and wide on the complicated longer-term scenarios impacting industries, countries and privacy. However, in my view, a couple of things have been under-emphasised. The first is seeing this announcement as a diversion from some of the large existential problems Facebook has today. The second is seeing the messages through the lens of employer brand — Facebook needs tens of thousands of motivated workers now and in the future to build and maintain mountains of code. “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change” So said Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s in his novel, The Leopard. I think the announcement is primarily aimed at three groups. — the call for big tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple to be split apart is getting stronger on both sides of the Atlantic. Libra attempts to divert regulators from privacy and market dominance issues to new currency competition with the central banks, and competition for the dollar itself! Regulators _–_as most of Facebook’s profit comes from North America, however most active users are outside of the US. There is pressure for Facebook to monitise these users. Fund managers Meltem Demirors points out — just to maintain its current business, Facebook needs to keep its employees and hire more. From 2Q17 to 2Q18 Facebook went from 2 — now that’s a lot of coders! The days of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ are now dead in Silicon Valley, but Facebook needs to move on from its recent PR nightmare over Cambridge Analytica. Maintaining will be a current priority, if it drops and employees leave, then there is no Facebook. Employees and candidates 0,000 employees to over 30,000 employee morale ‘Banking the Unbanked’ is a much more noble aim than ‘Advertising to the Bored’. The announcement also launched its , new programming language and testnet for software engineers to stick their teeth into. open-source code Viva Libra! An Employer Branding Masterclass “First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth.” John F Kennedy’s address before Congress, May 25, 1961 Zuckerberg’s vision statement about sending money as easily as a photos ticks all the right boxes. It evokes JFK’s statement about putting a man on the moon. In some ways Zuckerberg’s goals for money is even bolder and much more utopian. But, what did landing a Man on the Moon ever do for us? ( .) This noble vision is aimed just as much at its workforce as it is to its shareholders. HT Monty Python, again The Libra name is a clever combination of money, justice, and freedom. Justice and Freedom (from banks?) — again this is aimed very much at its workforce. (but doesn’t play so well in Australia) Content is King, but Context is Kingdom of Zuckerberg This debate has only started and the themes are fascinating already. — Bitcoin was invented as a digital antidote to fiat money and to provide us all with digital gold without digging in the ground — but didn’t rid us of mining altogether. The crypto-anarchists vs capitalists “It’s cyberpunk come to life. Massive multinational corporations against the power of state.” — only about compared to . Libra could be the adoption rocket the crypto community has prayed for. Adoption boost 35m people in the world hold any crypto 2.4 billion users on Facebook — in the adoption of digital financial services, and social media — in some ways . Visa processes 2000 cash transactions/second, compared to Ant Financial (formerly Alipay) with 250,000 transactions/second. If Facebook does implement Libra in 2020, it will still be well behind where WeChat is now with both messaging, social media and payments. It is estimated that 80% of China’s big cities are cashless. Catching up with China the US is behind China — there are NO banks in the founding members of the consortium. As Vinay Gupta suggests, the value is not in financial transactions but in the behavioral data Facebook holds. This is a big challenge to the financial services industry. #FinTech vs #BigTech body[data-twttr-rendered="true"] {background-color: transparent;}.twitter-tweet {margin: auto !important;} I think Facebook will probably get pushed back but negotiate its way into being able to compete with a much larger set of financial services institutions as a result of being talked down from attacking the dollar itself (with is the threat they are making.) It's only the start. — @leashless function notifyResize(height) {height = height ? height : document.documentElement.offsetHeight; var resized = false; if (window.donkey && donkey.resize) {donkey.resize(height); resized = true;}if (parent && parent._resizeIframe) {var obj = {iframe: window.frameElement, height: height}; parent._resizeIframe(obj); resized = true;}if (window.location && window.location.hash === "#amp=1" && window.parent && window.parent.postMessage) {window.parent.postMessage({sentinel: "amp", type: "embed-size", height: height}, "*");}if (window.webkit && window.webkit.messageHandlers && window.webkit.messageHandlers.resize) {window.webkit.messageHandlers.resize.postMessage(height); resized = true;}return resized;}twttr.events.bind('rendered', function (event) {notifyResize();}); twttr.events.bind('resize', function (event) {notifyResize();});if (parent && parent._resizeIframe) {var maxWidth = parseInt(window.frameElement.getAttribute("width")); if ( 500 < maxWidth) {window.frameElement.setAttribute("width", "500");}} — Libra will enable payments — and this will also impact retail — over to you Amazon? InstaShop –To many in the world, Facebook IS the internet. The market capitalisation of Facebook, top 5 in the US, and other FAANGs, matters to the US economy bigly. For individual countries, owning these platforms gives power and bargaining in future games of security and trade. Geopolitics — I have written about the , where AI and blockchain machines can help find and pay the perfect worker for work that needs doing. With all the personal information available to Facebook, wouldn’t this be the perfect work platform? If as Vinay suggests, the value is in our behavioral data then this also applies to hiring too. And payments to workers need stable-coins, like Libra, in this context, rather than fluctuating crypto. As work unbundles, it will be interesting to see which activities can be tokenised. In the medium term, we can . The Tokenisation of Work future of work try and reduce $600 billion paid in remittances from overseas workers The Libra Balancing Act It is difficult to predict how Facebook’s long-term future will play out with battles on many fronts from Big Tech to FinTech to WeChat and Central Banks. There have been some bold predictions from futurists, but this needs to be balanced with what it means for today. The announcements can be seen as partly a deflection away from a crisis today, and a reframing of the Facebook narrative. It’s a PR masterstroke. The worst case is that with the increased scrutiny as a financial institution, trust in Facebook increases, and helps to reinforce its core business of US advertising. The best case is that it builds new markets, distracts its competitors and controls a chunk of future digital payments. Whether Zuckerberg is a Cyborg Assassin from 2029, or just an owner/boss trying to keep his business together, we shall find out in due course.

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