A report in today’s Financial Times claims that Facebook backed Libra is planning to launch its first digital currency in January 2021, a U.S. dollar stablecoin. However, it’s subject to a significant caveat that it gets approval from Swiss regulator FINMA. The article appears to be based on people close to Libra as opposed to regulators.
Three people told the newspaper that they thought FINMA might grant the go-ahead as early as January. The FT article also stated that Facebook’s wallet Novi (formerly Calibra) had already secured licenses in numerous U.S. states but awaits as many as ten, including a New York Bitlicense.
Our analysis is if the news is true, any launch is likely to have its scale limited, in a similar way to the roll-out of WhatsApp payments in India, which is limited to 20 million wallets from a 400 million Indian userbase.
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