What happened to Facebook's digital currency?

In 2019, Facebook (now Meta) announced it was developing a digital currency called Libra. Just a couple of years later, the project was dead in the water. What happened?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you? So? The day that this episode goes
out here in the United States is Labor Day. That's

(00:26):
a holiday, which means our office is closed. But I've
brought you a couple of reruns recently and I didn't
want to do that again, so I thought, why not
talk about, you know, some tech projects that never quite coalesced.
And I'm still going to do that, but you know,
I've done it a couple times before. I've talked about vaporware.

(00:47):
Vaporware refers to a project that at some point is
announced but it fails to manifest. That doesn't mean that
all projects that are called vaporware will always be vapor
where sometimes they do emerge, not always for the better.
For a very long time, I think sort of the
poster child of vaporware for many years was a video game,

(01:10):
and it was titled Duke Nukem Forever. This was considered
vaporware for more than a decade. The company behind it,
three D Realms, formerly known as Apagee Software announced Duke
Nukem Forever way back in nineteen ninety seven. It would
not emerge from development hell for more than a decade.

(01:31):
It did finally come out in twenty eleven to much
critical disdain. But for this episode, I'm actually going to
talk about a single tech project that got the acts,
it did not ever emerge from development, and to talk
about why that is. And in future episodes I am
going to talk about other tech projects that did not

(01:53):
quite make it to market. There's one from Atari in
particular I want to talk about because it was one
of those projects that sounded really interesting, but the closer
you looked at the more you realized, huh, this this
doesn't seem to be quite the same thing that was
marketed to me. But we'll save that for another episode instead.

(02:13):
In this one, I want to talk about a cryptocurrency
that ultimately was called dm but formerly was called Libra.
Now to do this, let's quickly have a refresher on
what cryptocurrency is. Specifically, we're talking about a digital currency
and it relies on encryption methodologies in order to track

(02:35):
and process transactions and payments. So this system has to
one be able to ensure that the currency is linked
to specific accounts belonging to specific people or entities. Otherwise,
if you can't establish that, then you can't be sure
that any transaction is legitimate. So it has to be

(02:58):
able to verify that any given account actually possesses the
funds needed for a transaction. That's first and foremost. Secondly,
the system has to be able to verify that a
transaction actually takes place. That is, it has to be
able to register that funds have changed hands from one
account to another. It has to be able to ensure
that no copies of that currency used in the transaction

(03:21):
have been created. Otherwise you could spend the same digital
dollar or whatever multiple times, the whole system would collapse
in short order. Of Essentially, there'd be no protection against
digital counterfeiting, and obviously that's a huge concern, right, Like
digital files are different from physical goods. We've talked about
this numerous times, particularly in the world of piracy. Like

(03:42):
it's one thing if you were to go to like
a big box store and shoplift a DVD, like you've
clearly stolen a copy of that thing, and it's a
copy that the store could have sold and now they're
at a loss. They have one fewer unit in their
inventory because you stole it. It's different if it's a file.

(04:03):
If you make a copy of a file, well, the
original file still exists, it hasn't been deleted, it doesn't disappear,
and maybe you wouldn't have purchased this digital file otherwise,
So there's no loss in sales because all you did
was make a copy. So like there are fundamental differences

(04:23):
between digital goods and physical goods, well, the same thing
is true of digital currency and physical currency. Right, Like
you can't easily duplicate a dollar bill, you could try
to counterfeit one, but it's hard to do. It's hard
to do well, at least, I guess technically it's easy
to do if you're doing a really crappy job. But
you're you're probably gonna get found out if you do that,

(04:45):
So you got to figure out ways to make that
difficult or preferably impossible to do on the digital scale,
or else the whole system doesn't work. So digital currencies
are tricky. The blockchain has been and sort of the
foundation for many digital currencies ever since it was introduced

(05:05):
in a white paper for Bitcoin way back in the day.
And I'm not going to go into full detail about
what the blockchain is, but just know that the blockchain,
the design of the blockchain was meant to solve some
of these issues, to be able to serve as a
record of transactions and a means of verifying transactions, and

(05:27):
to make sure that nobody is trying to, you know,
get a little creative and be able to exploit the
system by hacking it or whatever. Now, some digital currencies
are inherently volatile, which means their value can change wildly
in a relatively short amount of time. It's great to

(05:47):
talk about that because when I started working on this episode,
bitcoin's value was at sixty thousand dollars about six three
hundred and seventy bucks right around that area. Days before
I started working on the episode, it was trading at
more than sixty four thousand dollars per bitcoin. So a

(06:08):
single bitcoin's value changed by around four grand in just
five days, which is wild. Today, as I record this,
the value is below sixty thousand dollars, so it's changed
even more now. A little less than a year ago,
bitcoin was valued at around twenty five thousand dollars per bitcoin,
so the value has doubled in less than a year,

(06:29):
but then in the course of a week it is
dropped by five thousand dollars. That's crazy volatility, and it
makes it really hard to use the currency as an
actual currency because the value of the currency changes so
dramatically and so quickly, even though you're talking about fractions
of a bitcoin per transaction, unless you're moving massive amounts

(06:52):
of wealth around, it could mean that what looks like
a bargain one day could turn out to be a
case where you're dramatically over paid for something just a
couple of days later. Right if it turns out the
nickel you used to buy a candy bar the following
day could have bought you a Chevy that you're gonna think, Wow,
that was the most expensive candy bar I've ever bought.

(07:14):
And it's not really that I guess that the value
has changed over the course of those days, but it
does mean that if you had held onto that nickel,
you could have bought a lot of candy bars just
a couple of days later. This is one of the
big reasons why I'm not a fan of bitcoin. Just one.
There are periods where bitcoin's value is a little more stable,

(07:34):
but it's always somewhat volatile. However, there is an alternative
to this kind of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin isn't tied to any
other assets. It is its own thing, But there are
subsets of cryptocurrencies called stable coins. Now, these currencies link
their value to stable assets such as the US dollar.

(07:56):
The value of the currency fluctuates with the value of
those assets, but otherwise it's far less volatile than other types.
So you know, the US dollar, obviously we have inflation.
That's been an issue for the last few years, and
that would affect stable coins that were tied to the
US dollar. But even that volatility is nothing compared to
what you see in a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. So your

(08:19):
typical cryptocurrency also has a system that to some extent
democratizes things. Traditional currencies come from established financial institutions, typically
ones that have to obey strict regulations. Cryptocurrencies eschew this
centralized financial system to some degree or another. With bitcoin,

(08:39):
all the computers that connect to the Bitcoin ecosystem are
technically they're part of this, so it's democratized across all
of them. There's no centralized bank or anything like that. Now,
Libra would be a little bit different. Its network would
be limited to approved partners, So it's not just any
Yahoo who could join and become part of the Libra association,

(09:02):
but anyone could presumably at least participate in the ecosystem
through the buying and use of digital currency, you know,
converting other currencies or what I sometimes refer to. This
is not accurate, but it is sometimes how I find
myself accidentally referring to them as real currencies and then
digital currencies. That's reductive. It shows a real bias in

(09:25):
my perspective, but it is something I fall into accidentally,
so it could happen in this episode. Just a heads up.
So let's talk about Libra. So, Facebook, which had not
yet rebranded itself as Meta the company itself was called
Facebook at this time, announced Libra in the summer of
twenty nineteen. They published a white paper about it, and

(09:45):
that document opens by saying, quote Libra's mission is to
enable a simple global currency and financial infrastructure that empowers
billions of people. End quote. By the way, if you
want to read this white paper, I actually recommend using
archive dot org because I mean, just from the topic
of the episode, you already know Libra doesn't exist anymore.

(10:09):
Even DM, the rebranded version of Libra, doesn't exist anymore.
So the assets online that were records of this are
largely gone because it's it's kind of it's a dead project.
It's moot. But if you use archive dot org you
can go back and read those papers. I recommend you
do it if you want to learn more about what

(10:29):
it was trying to be. So the concept was Libra
wouldn't just be a cryptocurrency ecosystem, but also one that
would support smart contracts. Smart contracts can be pretty much anything, really.
It's meant to be like a thing built on top
of blockchain that allows for different types of transactions. Those

(10:50):
could be things like the deed to real estate. It
could be a smart contract for a purely digital asset.
It could be all sorts of stuff. But it would
also enable people who might otherwise have little to know
options to bank their money as a way to store
and move money around, because not everyone in the world
has access to a bank, but a lot of people

(11:12):
do have access to a smartphone. And I genuinely believe
that most of the people who are actually working on
the nuts and bolts of Libra were doing so with
this ideal in mind, that this could be a system
that could empower people, particularly people in developing countries, and
to remove barriers that otherwise make it really difficult to

(11:34):
deal with money across borders. Transferring money is often hard
or impossible, or at the very least very expensive, particularly
when you want to move money from one country to another.
So Libra could potentially open up opportunities for billions of
people to be able to do this in a way
that wouldn't represent a huge hardship. That I think is

(11:55):
a fairly noble ideal. The problem is bringing that ideal
in to reality, because that was going to take a
lot of work and a lot of luck, and Libra
would find problems with both of those things. I'll explain more,
but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors.

(12:21):
Before the break, I was talking about how Libra was
going to encounter some hurdles in its path toward empowering
billions of people and also in the process generating a
a heck ton amount of revenue for the various partners
in the Libra Association, particularly Facebook. Well. For one thing,

(12:42):
one of the challenges that they faced right away was
a matter of trust, so there was no single company
serving as the governing body that was controlling the Libra network.
But the fact that Facebook was spearheading this effort gave
a lot of people pause because this is the same
company that has built a multi billion dollar business that

(13:04):
centers around the collection and commoditization of user data. Most
of the time, when Facebook is in the news, it's
not positive for the company. It's usually some story about
how the company is aggressively finding new ways to generate
enormous amounts of revenue by trading and user information in
some way, or trying to find new ways to attract
more users in order to sell their information, or how

(13:27):
they are a bad steward of information, or how they
are aware of the potential negative impact their product has. Really,
I shouldn't say their product that their various platforms have
on their product, because we're not really the users. We're
the product here because it's our information that's being bought
and sold. So Facebook's customers aren't its users. Facebook's customers

(13:50):
are advertisers. We're the product, right Anyway, that's not something
that is great pr if you're also trying to push
out a digital currency, So there were real worries that
a digital currency introduced by Facebook would primarily be meant
as a way of generating yet more wealth for the corporation.

(14:11):
Anything else would just be of secondary importance. Could it
empower billions of people? Maybe, but that wasn't really what
it was about. That was the perception. Now that might
be an unfair assumption, but I would argue it's also
an understandable one based upon Facebook's long history. Now, for
the record, Facebook from the beginning, at least based on

(14:31):
the white paper, envisioned a consortium of organizations that would
serve as the governing entity over the blockchain and currency,
and this was initially called the Libra Association, which in
itself was designated as a not for profit organization that
would be headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. There were twenty eight

(14:52):
founding members listed and it included companies like MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, eBay,
Stripe and more. Though later on some of these organizations
would say that they had never signed any kind of
official agreement and so calling them a founding organization would
be misleading. It was more like they were interested, but
they never committed to it. In fact, between June twenty

(15:14):
nineteen and the first meeting of this association in October
of that same year, seven of the twenty eight companies
withdrew their names from the proverbial hat. So PayPal was
the first to hit that eject button on October fourth,
and on the eleventh, several companies, including Visa, Stripe, and
MasterCard all bailed in a matter of just a couple

(15:36):
of hours. So, according to the Verge, by the time
the meeting happened on October fourteenth, every major US payment
processor that had been announced as part of this association
had abandoned it. So they were all out before the
first meeting happened. That's a big problem, right. The payment
processing companies certainly would lend legitimacy to, if not actual

(15:57):
process and structure to the Libra Association, but they all left.
Why though, Well, perhaps a big part of that was
the first meeting would include deciding what roles and responsibilities
each member of the association would actually be responsible for,
and some of these companies had leaders who were likely
saying something like, Yeah, I'd rather bounce now rather than

(16:19):
face obligations that I'm not ready or able to meet.
But perhaps more importantly, governments in general, and regulators in
particular around the world, including the United States, were starting
to scrutinize digital currencies in general, cryptocurrencies in particular, and
there were serious concerns that, you know, these currencies could

(16:40):
be used by say, criminals and terrorists to launder money
and to move it around the world in ways that
would be difficult or impossible to detect and track and
police and big established companies aren't typically not very keen
on being associated with systems that potentially could facilitate the
funding of say, a terrorist action or whatnot that is

(17:02):
very bad pr so this project represented far too great
a risk. Besides, Facebook already had a really bad reputation
with regulators as far as protecting user information went, so
having a project that emerged from a company with such
a bad reputation was kind of a huge detriment from
the start. That just got worse as government officials became

(17:25):
very interested in Facebook's operations following a whistleblower coming forward
with internal documents showing some extremely unflattering stuff about the company.
So Facebook, as partly a result of this, or I
would argue as a result of this, underwent a name
change to Meta and backed away from Libra as well.
I think the name change to Meta was largely to

(17:47):
distance itself from those accusations that were made by the whistleblower,
and that this was an attempt to kind of like
wipe the slate clean of kind of a desperate attempt. Now.
I think Meta would say the rebrand was because the
company was so much more than just Facebook, and there
was this new focus on creating the metaverse, something that

(18:11):
continues to be kind of a well, joke is too
strong a word. It certainly mocked the concept of the
metaverse and Meta's continued dedication to trying to bring that about.
I think a lot of people are kind of just
not sold on the metaverse idea at all. Anyway. As
part of this effort, Facebook, I guess, sensing that this

(18:32):
was kind of a non starter, backed away from Libra,
and that's when Libra had its own rebranding and became DM,
partly in an effort to provide a little more distance
between the association and Facebook slash Meta Plus. At this point,
like most of the founding companies were no longer part
of this association and the plans had changed quite a bit,

(18:55):
So instead of offering a single stable coin currency tied
to lots of different assets. The plan shifted to offering
different digital currencies, each one anchored to a different real
world asset. However, regulators were still concerned about how this
could potentially disrupt the financial infrastructure of various countries, including
the United States, and it became clear that any path

(19:16):
forward was going to be extremely challenging and time consuming.
And it just turned out the Association wasn't willing to
stick it out, that there was too much uncertainty about
what would or would not be allowed, that the vision
was just going to be compromised multiple times in an
effort to be able to meet whatever regulations would emerge.

(19:37):
And so in early twenty twenty two, the DM Association
announced it was actually selling off all assets to Silvergate
Capital Corporation for the princely sum of one hundred and
eighty two million dollars. So you might think, oh, well,
maybe Silvergate would make something of it, except that the
following year Silvergate Capital liquidated. That was the bank that

(19:57):
in March twenty twenty three went out a business and
liq Quid dated largely because of the spectacular collapse of FTX,
So that was the sad but short Tale of Libra.
I hope all of you had an amazing weekend. For
those of you in the United States, I hope you're
having a great Labor Day and I will talk to
you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.

(20:26):
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