Will Governments Lose Monetary Control to Facebook's Libra Cryptocurrency?

Facebook has announced it will launch a new digital currency called Libra in 2020. What implications might this have for the ability of national governments to control the monetary system? Possibly none. As discussed below, Libra faces considerable regulatory and political headwinds. There may also be consumer resistance given Facebook’s patchy record with the privacy of customer data. There is, furthermore, a history of attempts to launch alternative currencies and payments systems that have failed, from Mondex and Digicash in the 1990s to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies more recently. Even Facebook itself had launched Facebook Credits in 2009 before abandoning it in 2013.