You can't live your life outside your country's currency though. It has a built-in demand because you have to pay taxes in it. So you're going to have to buy some of it somewhere.
> - An international currency can sidestep the artificial middleman fees and friction caused by traditional monetary exchanges. Ex. my friend who is currently studying in Japan wanted to get some money from her US bank account to Japan to pay for tuition and not only had to wait for banks to be open, but also had to pay exchange and transfer fees.
Try TransferWise.
> You can't live your life outside your country's currency though. It has a built-in demand because you have to pay taxes in it. So you're going to have to buy some of it somewhere.
Yes but then you can shop around for conversion and can keep the majority of your liquidity in a vehicle which is less easily manipulated but just as fungible (I am just arguing about the utility of a global, trans-national currency and not speaking to specifics offered by the Facebook coin specifically).
Currently, if you want to hedge against the Yuan but still want to buy goods in China, you don't have many choices. But if vendors accepted some other currency in addition to Yuan, you can convert to Yuan to settle debts with your government and keep your holdings liquid elsewhere.
TransferWise doesn't work any faster than SWIFT -- if anything it's usually slower. They don't have any magic way to put money into your account on a "bank holiday" either.
I imagine Libra won't take Sundays off, at least.
And a lot (if not most) of them will not accept foreign cards, even if the ATM is accessible.
7/11 to the rescue, however.
As long as these three points are true: a) the notion of a stablecoin means stable relative to one selected fiat currency, b) the goods you are selling or purchasing are priced both in your local currency (which may or may not be the stablecoin peg) and the stablecoin, and c) that governments can still manipulate the ordinary currencies, then I don't see how you can be free from government manipulation.
FWIW, the EUR/JPY and USD/JPY pairs are historically highly correlated.
- A currency outside of traditional governments would theoretically be free of currency manipulation by those governments (ex. China and the Yuan)
- An international currency can sidestep the artificial middleman fees and friction caused by traditional monetary exchanges. Ex. my friend who is currently studying in Japan wanted to get some money from her US bank account to Japan to pay for tuition and not only had to wait for banks to be open, but also had to pay exchange and transfer fees.
- This one doesn't necessarily require an independent currency, but crypto also theoretically enables the fabled land of online micro-tipping for content creators, publishers, etc.