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
1000 words, but use a common references list for both and make sure your
individual answers add-up to the overall word-count of 2000 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.
[50 marks]
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 Libra would be the
realisation of the anonymous, disintermediated ‘Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash
System’1 that Bitcoin sought to be.
[50 marks]