Assignment Questions
The module is 100% assessed through this assignment.Use as a starting point the case study ‘Facebook’s Cryptocurrency Libra:Caught in Controversy’?Using this case study and what you find out from your further reading and research, and focusing on the literature discussed in the module answer both questions below. Answer each question separately as a stand-alone mini-essay of not more than 1500 words, but use a common references list for both and make sure your individual answers add-up to the overall word-count of 3000 words.
1.Describe briefly how national and international payments systems work, paying attention to identify–where relevant –key objects of exchange, agents/actors, structures of relations between agents, and calculative devices in your account. If Facebook’s Libra was to become a reality along the lines envisaged by Facebook, discuss how this might impact these existing national and international payments infrastructures.[50marks]
2.The case study reports statements by Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, that Libra presents the possibility of “creating an entirely separate economy”.Referencing relevant literature,critically discuss whether the ties between actors in this separate financial ecosystem would be identical to those within the existing banking-system-based economy,or whether it would be the realisation of the anonymous, disintermediated ‘Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’1that Bitcoin sought to be.
