Unlike FB friends, which is a strong moat for facebook, exchanging cryptocurrencies is trivially easy. I don't use facebook but i 'd use libra considering that it opens up a huge audience the same way way mastercard does. And in that respect, FB would have to compete with mastercard and visa for user payment data, which (should be) a well regulated realm.
> that's diametrically opposed to the needs of a currency - a universal token
Currencies dont need to be universal, at least they were not until maybe the gold standard. It's government enforcement that made them look universal, but until then , a currency was of equal holding value as any commodity like gold. That was a good hedge against government misuse imho. And , looking at the manipulation of central govt rates, there is misuse today, worldwide. That doesnt mean the only alternative is FB of course, but it could be one, and i dont see a danger in it being one.
> such as BTC as there is no threat to the universality of exchange
BTC is a direct threat to any government that prints fiat money. It's just too small yet, so your theory gives it a pass.
Mastercard is a financial service for dealing with dollars, pounds, euros etc. Libra is not. To a logical conclusion it wants to be alongside dollars and euros with Mastercard offering a Libracard.
Universality and confidence came long, long before the 19th century gold standard - to the early Middle Ages and beyond, a state, or king, set the purity of coin, the penalty for clipping, mutilating the coin and so on. The gold standard developed from, and long after coinage standard and assaying.
Again in the early ME, particularly during the Viking age, and with some overlap with coin, people used hacksilver and similar as preferred medium of exchange because there was inherent value to the commodity. Hacksilver goes long back into the dim and distant ancient past, beyond other universal coins and currencies that achieved confidence, such as Roman. So yes, it was the ultimate - and very effective - hedge, particularly as towns fell, were raided or found themselves repeatedly changing side.
Of course government can abuse rates, but the scope is amplified orders of magnitude with a Company Scrip. Libra is a company scrip that risks destabilising proper currencies, and creating islands of inclusion and exclusion. By contrast, BTC is not, and does not. The difference in regulatory response seems clear, and warranted.
> to the early Middle Ages and beyond, a state, or king, set the purity of coin, the penalty for clipping
People trusted gold at least as much as their king though, even if the roman emperor or king tried hard to push his coin. The Florin was very popular in europe but florence was a small territory. Taxes were often paid via barter. Silver and gold were not made by any government / even aluminum was once more precious than gold. You can have all of those, because people understand the value of monetary tokens as mediums of exchange, and money doesn't have to be universal. It's only in very recent decades that people have lost all control and voice about their money. With increased coordination, regulation and data exchange between central banks around the world, having choice is what cryptocurrencies bring back.
Quite, and that's why there was an overlap of things like hacksilver that had value by weight of metal, into the periods of currency - or war and turmoil. Confidence in coins of the realm goes back much further than you imply, and had islands of confidence further back, such as during Pax Romana.
Choice is what some cryptocurrencies bring - the anarchistic ones. Even there I see little to no chance of surpassing central bank backed currencies - that's just a pipe dream. Of the corporate backed cryptocurrencies, the "with profit" currencies, they're simply Company Scrip, and an entirely different species apart.
> that's diametrically opposed to the needs of a currency - a universal token
Currencies dont need to be universal, at least they were not until maybe the gold standard. It's government enforcement that made them look universal, but until then , a currency was of equal holding value as any commodity like gold. That was a good hedge against government misuse imho. And , looking at the manipulation of central govt rates, there is misuse today, worldwide. That doesnt mean the only alternative is FB of course, but it could be one, and i dont see a danger in it being one.
> such as BTC as there is no threat to the universality of exchange
BTC is a direct threat to any government that prints fiat money. It's just too small yet, so your theory gives it a pass.