Facebook skeptics offer derivatives to bet on Libra delays

Bloomberg

Facebook Inc’s proposed cryptocurrency has faced such overwhelming scorn since it was announced in June that an exchange is facilitating bets on whether the social-media company can come close to meeting its target launch date.
CoinFLEX, a crypto-futures exchange that launched earlier this year, is offering derivatives that pay out based on the likelihood Libra will be operational by the end of 2020. Facebook has said it plans to begin by the middle of next year but will not do so until regulators are satisfied, a substantial qualifier given the misgivings of policy makers from France’s finance minister to the chairman of the US Federal Reserve.
From the moment Facebook officially unveiled Libra, the digital currency has faced an onslaught of criticism, with regulators and central bankers raising concerns over the potential threats to everything from data privacy to financial stability and even monetary policy, given the size and reach of the company. And with Libra becoming a political football, even Facebook executives have started to dial down expectations of a timely launch.
“Facebook has the ability to rival the entire global banking system from day one, but, because of that fact, when that first day will be is far from certain,” said Mark Lamb, CoinFLEX’s Hong Kong-based chief executive officer. “The political backlash has been brutal, and it’s anyone’s guess if Facebook will get this over the line.”
While David Marcus, the head of Facebook’s blockchain efforts and the public face of Libra, is sticking to the initial target, other executives have been less emphatic. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month declined to directly answer whether the token will launch in 2020, saying “obviously we want to move forward at some point soon” and not have it take “many years to roll out,” adding “right now I’m really focused on making sure that we do this well.”
“We cannot say that we won’t launch in 2020, or that we are certain to launch on a particular date in 2020,” said Bertrand Perez, chief operating officer of the Libra Association, in an interview. The timing of Libra’s introduction depends on discussions with regulators, then “the rest will flow from there,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Libra Association, the group of companies and charities that manage the Libra token and payments system, said it has “continued to share that our goal is to launch in 2020” and it has “no other specifics to share at this time.”