There’s obviously a big problem with this. Many people don’t trust Facebook with their private data, see it as a threat to democracy, or both. Now the company wants to launch its own currency? Is it just trolling us?

At this point the company might emphasize that it won’t be in charge of the Libra Association, the nonprofit it created to manage the currency. The group, made up of 20 other firms in addition to Facebook, will manage a “reserve” of government-issued money that is supposed to back each digital unit and keep the currency stable. Half of that reserve will be US dollars, and the other half will be made up of British pounds, Japanese yen, euros, and Singapore dollars.

Fine, but the design itself has worried US policymakers, who say they can’t even tell what Libra is, much less how to deal with it. Whatever it is, it will probably be hard to ignore in 2020.

A trigger warning for the purists

If you are insulted that I even called Libra a “cryptocurrency,” and find yourself triggered by what you view as the misuse of this word, I’ve got some bad news: it’s going to get worse. You can thank Libra for that. Also, the People’s Bank of China.

Recall Zuckerberg’s warning to Congress about how China had “similar ideas” to Libra. Indeed, China appears poised to launch a digital version of its sovereign currency in 2020, and officials from the People’s Bank of China have said the digital renminbi will bear similarities to Facebook’s plan.

Many cryptocurrency enthusiasts argue that true cryptocurrency is the product of a decentralized, “permissionless” network like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is designed to provide freedom from corporate and government censorship, and its network is controlled by a global public network made up of thousands of computers.

Libra, meanwhile, was dreamed up by a huge corporation, and its network will be controlled by a small number of vetted private entities. China’s digital renminbi will apparently be similar, but controlled by a central bank. Nonetheless, expect headlines and news reports in 2020 to keep calling them cryptocurrencies, with no regard for your feelings on the matter. Introducing new terms would be likely to make the situation more disorienting than it already is for non-enthusiasts, most of whom probably won’t even grasp the distinction between “digital currency” and “cryptocurrency.” Sorry.

Traditional financial gatekeepers will lose more of their mojo

If you are the US government, in the coming year crypto will probably trigger you too.

In 2019, we saw small-time illustrations of how digital currency could be used to chip away at America’s influence over the global financial system. That phenomenon is likely to continue–and even expand—in 2020.

Since the dollar is by far the world’s most popular reserve currency, the US has disproportionate control over how money flows around the world. But China aims to promote its own currency, the renminbi, as an alternative, and some foreign-policy analysts think it might do so by encouraging international adoption of the digital version. That may be part of why its central bank seemed to spring into action after the Libra announcement.

In addition to China, Iran and Russia also appear interested in using digital currency as the basis for a parallel financial system that the US can’t control. The governments of Venezuela and North Korea have apparently already turned to cryptocurrency to evade sanctions.

We got a hint of how the US might react to this kind of thing in November, when the Department of Justice announced charges against Virgil Griffith, an employee for the Ethereum Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the development of the world’s second-most-valuable cryptocurrency network, for allegedly providing “services” to North Koreans in a way that violated US sanctions. Now he faces 20 years in prison.

Is that excessive? Should the US have so much power to block other nations from the financial system? How important is that power to its national security? Could China use its digital currency to expand its global influence? And what might be the geopolitical impact of hundreds of millions of people using something like Libra?

Have a headache yet? You were warned.