Bigtech, Stabletech, and Libra coin - new dawn, new challenges, new solutions

Facebook has also announced that it will attempt to resolve all of the separate legal and regulatory challenges that arise in an equally direct and open manner.12 The fundamental difficulty that arises is an inherent conflict between global technology and local control, which cannot be managed through existing supervisory and regulatory means.13 A separate single market and local access and control conflict was created within the European Union and other regional markets.14 This has re-emerged as a virtual and real or domestic law conflict has emerged more recently with the growth of the Internet and online commercial, banking, and financial services. A number of papers have been issued on cryptocurrencies,15 cryptoassets,16 and CBDC.17 The launch of Libra has most recently led to a new focus by authorities on the regulatory challenges that arise with regard to stablecoins.18 This includes the establishment of a G7 Working Group on Stablecoins which has been examining the issues that arise with regard to global stablecoins (GSCs) with other bodies including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).19 None of this, however, has created the necessary formal processes, procedures, or standards necessary to manage innovation on the scale of Facebook's Libra. Legal determinations arise with regard to whether stablecoins should be regulated as money, payment, banking, security, commodity, a collective investment scheme, market infrastructure, note issuance and legal tender, counterfeiting, anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, data protection and information provision, and financial inclusion.22 Financial control has to be reconsidered in terms of ensuring effective financial regulation, supervision, resolution, support, and wider macro-prudential oversight.23 A separate series of technical challenges have to be resolved especially in terms of decentralization, digitalization, identity, cryptographic access, title transfer, transaction hashing, reconciliation and consensus, blocking, scalability and resilience, wallet provision or interface, interoperability and smart function, code, and governance.24 Eight further areas of new policy control and concern can also be identified. The BIS has recommended the creation of a "new regulatory compass" in response to BigTech's advance.27 A number of major BigTech firms have expanded their financial services a