Facebook plans to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra next year as part of its wider efforts to expand beyond social networking into e-commerce and global payments.
Facebook will join with 28 partners to form Libra Association, a Geneva-based entity governing its new digital coin, which will be launched in the first half of 2020.
The head of TMT Research at Mirabaud Securities in London, Neil Campling, says given Facebook’s history of managing users’ data, it shouldn’t take much to convince people that allowing Facebook to control their money is a “terrible idea.”