I have a feeling that they will end just launching something in developing countries with weak regulation and will be done with it. It's a way to get more data from people. It's becoming pretty clear that this will not fly in the US or EU.
Owning other people's money and controlling where it can and cannot flow is way more than a way to get more data.
Since it is a cryptocurrency, the whole point is to allow people to send money w/o censorship.
The whitepaper also says that Libra will launch permissioned and transition to a permissionless cryptocurrency.
Yes, and Facebook hasn't lied to us before? They don't have an actual plan on how to accomplish this transition, which necessarily includes completely redefining the whole system Libra is based on.
They will probably be able to pull something like this off in a country with poor banking.
So in terms of large-ish economies/populations, maybe they have a chance in parts of Africa (I know some people working at chinese-owned companies hard at work on this market) and maybe parts of South America and SEA?
Maybe the will make it work in countries that are either corrupt or incompetently managed. I don't see why a reasonably competent or reasonably non-corrupt government would allow this.
What even is the USP of Libra?