The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Mon, 04 May 2026 18:46:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png Regulating Libra – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 Regulating Libra https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/07/10/regulating-libra/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=regulating-libra https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/07/10/regulating-libra/#comments Wed, 10 Jul 2019 13:14:01 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=120076?d=20190712164903EDT Posted by Ross Buckley (University of New South Wales), Dirk Zetzsche (University of Luxembourg), and Douglas Arner (University of Hong Kong), on Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Editor's Note:

Ross Buckley is the KPMG Law-KWM Professor of Disruptive Innovation at the University of New South Wales Sydney; Dirk A. Zetzsche is Professor and ADA Chair in Financial Law at the University of Luxembourg and Director of the Center for Business & Corporate Law at Heinrich Heine University in Duesseldorf; and Douglas Arner is Kerry Holdings Professor in Law at the University of Hong Kong. This post is based on their recent paper.

On June 18, Facebook announced its proposal to launch a new cryptocurrency next year, named the Libra. In a new paper we analyse how Libra will work, discuss the governance of the organization behind it (the Libra Association), explore its transformative potential, and consider its likely regulatory implications.

Libra will serve as e-money. Its value will be tied to a basket of major government-issued currencies and for each Libra issued an equal value of such currency, or highly liquid government bonds, will be placed on deposit with a reliable repository. Libra will be a stablecoin—a cryptocurrency the value of which is tied to that of fiat currency. Libra is not the first stablecoin, but it will be the first stablecoin with such breathtaking global reach and utility as Facebook has over 2.3 billion active monthly users.

Libra’s usefulness may initially be limited in highly developed countries with good payment systems, but it will be potentially transformative for many of the 1.7 billion people who today lack access to the most basic financial services. Libra is mobile money in the Kenyan M-Pesa sense, but on a global scale: AliPay and WeChatPay for all.

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