In June, Facebook released its much-anticipated whitepaper for its cryptocurrency Libra Coin. What follows is my first impressions of what this means and why Facebook’s move is so interesting. I will admit I was betting on Amazon releasing a token before anyone else. Alas, they did not and instead Amazon has gone full on into the money transfer business in a tiny market called India. That though is a story for another time. Here are some of my initial thoughts regarding Facebook’s Libra Coin: 

1. Hedge Fund? Upon my initial reading of the Libra Coin white paper, I had a distinct feeling that the Libra Reserve was just a hedge fund. I felt this way because of the language of how the reserve works and the assets it would manage on behalf of the Libra Coin. Too, because the “nodes” of the network had to contribute $10M to be a validator or part of the network. To me that sounded like 70 entities and counting that each invested $10M into a fund. What does this fund do? Hedges risk assoc