Facebook’s Libra: Stablecoins Burst on the Scene
July 17, 2019 at 11:43 AM EDT
By Jan van Eck, VanEck CEO, Gabor Gurbacs, VanEck Director, Digital Assets Strategy In recent remarks at the Financial Stability Report press conference, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, said: “It’s way too expensive to do domestic payments. It’s way too slow, and that hurts consumers and businesses. It stifles innovation, and it’s far too expensive to send money cross-border, and there are huge financial inclusion issues related to that and costs related to that. So, while we are trying to address all these issues, we have to absolutely acknowledge the problem that they’re [Facebook] trying to solve. And if it’s not this, we’d better have some answers for what else it is.” The answer may be in stablecoin. Until this year, and maybe even today, the average investor has never heard of a stablecoin. With Facebook’s Libra announcement and the controversy it has created, we feel that it is high time to explain what a stablecoin is, where it came from, and how it may disrupt the payments system.