Morgan Beller, the co-creator of Meta’s now-defunct Libra digital currency project, revealed onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 that “what got [her] out of bed every morning [at the time] was China.”
In case that wasn’t explicit enough, Beller directly referred to the Belt and Road Initiative, which is considered a centerpiece of China’s foreign policy. Spicy, isn’t it? Let’s unpack this.
First, a caveat: Beller prefaced her comments with a disclaimer that she wasn’t talking on behalf of Meta; she is now a general partner at venture firm NFX.
Still, it adds new context to Libra — and Meta — to know that its co-creator was motivated by geopolitical concerns about the Chinese Communist Party.
Libra — the original name of Meta’s stablecoin project — later became known as Diem, but both are now history. In 2022, its assets were sold to crypto-focused bank Silvergate, which wrote off the investment in 2023.
Quite a bit has already been written on Libra’s fate. Same goes for the deflated hype around cryptocurrencies. The less-often-told part of the story is geopolitical — and not wanting the U.S. to lose ground to the Asian superpower.
The Belt and Road Initiative has been compared to the American Marshall Plan. But since China is no democracy, it raised alarm bells in the West at every turn. Just this week, we learned that Germany may be considering a ban on parts made by Huawei and ZTE in its 5G networks from 2026.
Spying fears had already driven the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to ban new sales from these brands and others over national security concerns.
But 5G isn’t the only domain where China is hoping to gain dominance, or conversely, where the U.S. risks losing ground. Beller said that 5G was the second phase of China’s strategy; the fourth and current phase is space. Libra was her response to phase three: money.
Diem co-creator David Marcus, Beller’s boss at the time, testified before Congress in 2019 to defend Libra. Beller said that back then, Marcus heard from senators that the dollar, not nuclear weaponry, was the U.S.’s biggest line of defense. But for how long? “If you believe that the future of money is digital, not physical — which I think is just a fact — then the U.S. government is kind of shitting the bed on that; and China gets it. So that was a big motivation behind Libra,” Beller said.
Beller’s concerns while building Libra weren’t limited to China, though:
“4 billion people are under authoritarian regimes, and therefore those leaders would probably love to have forms of money where they can more easily track who’s using it, how it’s being used. If you look at the Western world, there are two companies that could launch that type of asset to a similar sized group of people: Facebook and Google. So that was my motivation behind [Libra].”
“Of course,” Beller said, “the headlines never will or did tell that part of the story.” Well, here you go.