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(经济学人 2019/Oct./24 期)
Libra注定会失败吗?
脸书计划中的数字货币经历了悲惨的几个月
6月18日，脸书宣布将于2020年推出新的全球支付系统和货币Libra。这项计划被美国国会议员布拉德·谢尔曼称为“Zuck Buck(钱)”(MarkZuckerberg是脸书老板)，它将结合企业家的胆识和加密货币背后的技术来撼动世界金融体系。金钱将以智能手机滑动的速度流动，甚至跨越国界。Libra会润滑 (lubricate)富裕国家的生活，并给贫穷国家的生活带来革命性的变化。毕竟，正如该公司指出的那样，17亿人无法进入银行账户。除了进一步扩大脸书的帝国，Libra还会把他们纳入财务范畴。
在接下来的四个月里， Libra经历了一段痛苦的时光。它的许多合作公司都临阵退缩了。世界各地的政治家和监管者都发出了反对的声音。10月23日，脸书的老板马克·扎克伯格在华盛顿特区度过了孤独的几个小时，回答了来自众议院金融服务委员会的美国政客们充满敌意的 (hostile) 问题。
正如扎克伯格所承认的，问题之一是脸书本身。来自加州民主党的Maxine Waters，是委员会主席，通过揭露一系列的罪行，开始程序，指出它在47个州受到反垄断调查，俄罗斯已经用脸书来干涉美国选举，由于欺骗消费者并被罚款50亿美元。来自纽约的民主党人Nydia Velazquez指责扎克伯格在将2014年被脸书收购的即时通讯服务WhatsApp的用户数据与公司其他部门的数据合并
的问题上，向欧洲监管机构撒谎。这位国会女议员感到疑惑，这样的公司，为什么要被托付像货币这样重要的东西呢?
扎克伯格指出，管理 Libra的不是脸书，而是 Libra协会(Libra Association)，这是一家总部位于瑞士的独立机构，成员包括其他公司。但这种联系已经不像过去那样了。在最初的28名成员中，有四分之一已经离开。在线支付公司PayPal于10月4日离开。一周后，eBay、万事达、Mercado Pago、Stripe和Visa—另一组支付公司——以及旅游公司Booking Holdings也纷纷跳槽。PayU是一家荷兰公司，也是唯一一家仍在联盟内的支付公司。其他留下的公司包括两家叫车公司(优步和Lyft)，两家电信公司( Iliad和沃达丰)，一群风险投资家和一些慈善机构。该协会的产品主管 Simon Morris 已于8月离职。
其他问题涉及用户隐私和 Libra座对洗钱者的潜在吸引力。扎克伯格承诺，除非Libra获得美国字母汤的(alphabet soup，复杂的概貌和特征)金融监管机构的许可，否则它不会上市。但对于一个有全球野心的货币来说，安抚美国人是不够的。法国、德国和意大利已经表示他们可能会阻挡 Libra;拥有超过5亿互联网用户的印度的部长们也对此不感兴趣。脸书曾表示，与大多数加密货币不同，Libra将由一篮子资产支持，包括货币和政府债券。然而，富国俱乐部G7的一份报告称，如果 Libra 被广泛采用，可能会对全球金融体系构成风险，在它被证明是安全的之前，不应继续推行。Libra一直被描述为一种加密货币(其具体运作方式仍不清楚)，这将于事无补:监管机构很清楚加密货币在欺诈和不正当交易方面的名声。
不过，积极思考仍然是当今的主流，至少在公共场合是这样。扎克伯格先生详细地谈到了创新的价值，以及 Libra在世界各地传播自由和民主的潜力。在本月早些时候，一些合作公司从 Libra协会背叛之后，发起 Libra这项创新的脸书员工戴维马库斯(David Marcus)，他在twitter上说，“在某种程度上，这是一种解放”。也许。但脸书可能希望未来不会有太大的解放。
English contents:
Is Libra doomed?Facebook’s planned digital currency has had a miserable few months
On june 18th Facebook announced Libra, a new global payments system and currency, to be launched in 2020. Dubbed the “Zuck Buck” by Brad Sherman, an American congressman, the plan was to employ a mix of entrepreneurial daring and the technology underlying cryptocurrencies to shake up the world’s financial systems. Money would move at the speed of a smartphone-swipe, even across borders. Libra would lubricate life in the rich world and revolutionise it in poor countries, where basic financial services are dear and often scarce. After all, as the firm points out, 1.7bn people have no access to a bank account. Besides further expanding Facebook’s empire, Libra would bring them into the financial fold.
In the subsequent four months, Libra has had a bruising time. Many of its partner firms have got cold feet. Politicians and regulators around the world have made disapproving noises. On October 23rd Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s boss, spent a lonely few hours in Washington, dc, fielding mostly hostile questions from American politicians on the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.
One problem, as Mr Zuckerberg admitted, is Facebook itself. Maxine Waters, the Californian Democrat who chairs the committee, began proceedings with a litany of its misdeeds, pointing out that it is subject to antitrust investigations in 47 states, that Russia has used it to meddle in American elections, and that it has been fined $5bn for deceiving consumers. Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat from New York, accused Mr Zuckerberg of lying to European regulators over the firm’s merging of user data from WhatsApp, a messaging service bought by Facebook in 2014, with those from the rest of the company. Why, the congresswoman wondered, should a firm like that be trusted with something as important as a currency?
Mr Zuckerberg pointed out that Libra would be administered not by Facebook, but by the Libra Association, an independent body that includes other companies and is based in Switzerland. But the association is already not what it was. Of the 28 original members, a quarter have left. PayPal, an online-payments firm, departed on October 4th. A week later eBay, Mastercard, Mercado Pago, Stripe and Visa—another group of payment firms—jumped ship, as did Booking Holdings, a travel company. PayU, a Dutch firm, is the only payments firm still in the association. Other remainers include two ride-hailing firms (Uber and Lyft), a pair of telecoms companies (Iliad and Vodafone), a gaggle of venture capitalists and a handful of charities. The association’s head of product, Simon Morris, left in August.
Other questions concerned users’ privacy and Libra’s potential attractiveness to money-launderers. Mr Zuckerberg promised that Libra would not launch until it had permission from America’s alphabet soup of financial regulators. But for a currency with global ambitions, placating the Americans will not suffice. France, Germany and Italy have already said they may block Libra; ministers in India, which has more than half a billion internet users, have been unenthusiastic too. Facebook has said that, unlike most cryptocurrencies, Libra will be backed by a basket of assets, including currencies and government bonds. A report by the g7, a rich-country club, nevertheless said that Libra, if widely adopted, could pose a risk to the global financial system and should not go ahead until it could be proved safe. That Libra has been described as a cryptocurrency (exactly how it would work remains unclear) will not have helped: regulators are well aware of cryptocurrencies’ reputation for scams and shady dealing.
Still, positive thinking is the order of the day, at least in public. Mr Zuckerberg talked at length about the value of innovation, and Libra’s potential to spread freedom and democracy around the world. After the defections from the Libra Association earlier in the month David Marcus, the Facebook employee leading the initiative, tweeted that “in a way, it’s liberating”. Perhaps. But Facebook may hope there is not too much more liberation to come.
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