[aey]

That’s a good question. My US centric view:

The open market faction in the US would love to see those trade barriers lowered. Money is expensive to move.

From an ofac perspective, an immutable ledger would allow investigators to trace the funds. Small time criminals use venmo already.

USD as a world currency. I really can’t imagine libra being anything else but an extension of USD.

[salawat]

The issue comes in that financial regulations of the AML and OFAC variety are basically dependent on money only moving in significant amounts through institutions with a lot to lose by not playing ball, and the account creation process having as many controls as possible.

While the immutable ledger is nice, it isn't new, nor does it change the game at all. To be honest, the Libra thing wouldn't be much different at all given the right set of business processes being built around it.

The problem is who is doing it, and what they gain if they are actually allowed to implement those controls. Facebook would have an undisputed goldmine. Full data on every transaction you process through Libra, all your information as collected through integration with services like LexisNexis (which is bloody creepy by the way, even if it is based on public records) plus their already problematic information w.r.t their social network graph.

There is no way that much data collected in one place isn't a societal liability. Period. But no, we're getting reporting that regulators are worried about terrorists. Never mind that private currencies just make auditing and forensic accounting that much more difficult.