Opinion: Libra retreat would bring joy and relief to Asia

Facebook's original plan was to create a synthetic unit that would hold its value against a basket of existing currencies. — Reuters

Facebook Inc’s idea of a global cryptocurrency may get demoted to something more humble. You can almost hear a collective sigh of relief from Asian central banks.

The original plan was to create a synthetic unit that would hold its value against a basket of existing currencies. Libra was being billed as a future rival to the greenback, a blockchain innovation that would promote financial inclusion by catering to the daily needs of billions of people. It’s a so-called stablecoin, a virtual currency that avoids the wild, speculative gyrations of Bitcoin by tracking the value of a low-volatility asset such as the US dollar.