> So, first, Libra will be a “stablecoin,” in the sense that its value will be pinned to conventional financial assets. Unlike most stablecoins, though, it will be pinned to a basket “of low-volatility assets, including bank deposits and government securities” in different currencies, so it won’t consistently be worth one dollar or one euro or anything else. “As the value of Libra will be effectively linked to a basket of fiat currencies, from the point of view of any specific currency, there will be fluctuations in the value of Libra.”
> This strikes me as very annoying, but it has some obvious advantages for Facebook/Libra. For one thing, they’ll only need to manage one general Libra, rather than having different stablecoins corresponding to different national currencies. For another thing, if Libra gains widespread acceptance, its lack of one-to-one correspondence will give it a tendency to displace national currencies. If you mostly spend dollars, and Libra is always going up and down against the dollar, that will be annoying and you won’t want as many Libras. But if you mostly spend Libras—if Facebook is successful at making this the main currency of the internet—then that dynamic will reverse. If the dollar is always going up and down against the Libra, that will be annoying and you’ll want more Libras. The dollar will start to seem unstable and useless. If you buy most things online, and if everything online is priced in Libras, then you’ll end up living your life denominated in Libras, and only converting your Libras into dollars on your occasional touristic visits to the physical world.[4] The goal is for Libra to be more useful than any national currency, accepted in more places and with fewer complications; pegging it to a single national currency would only hold it back.