Would you trust this man with your money?

There were more than 2,400 cryptocurrencies in circulation by June 2019, with further launches on a daily basis. Most were nearly worthless, had been heard of by virtually no one, and never would be.

 So when yet another called Libra was announced in a white paper on June 18, you might have expected it to attract no more attention than any of the others.


But from the moment of its launch, Libra received a huge amount of attention. The project made many of the same promises most new digital currencies tout: it would work more efficiently than existing payment technologies, and it would avoid the huge spikes and falls in value that made Bitcoin, the first and best-known cryptocurrency, such a roulette wheel.

More eye-catching was its promise to target billions of the world’s unbanked people with little or no access to the global financial system – so as to open up huge new business and work possibilities for at least some of the world’s poor, and revolutionise the global financial system.