Macro investor Raoul Pal: Libra is showing the world that anybody can create a digital currency

Libra is setting the stage for a new financial system in which anyone can create their own digital currency, according to Raoul Pal, a well-known macro investor and the CEO of finance media platform Real Vision.

In the latest episode of The Scoop, Pal argued that Libra is important if only because it will inspire other companies and industry groups to create new private currencies. 

“Google could have their own, the oil market could have their own, the private sector could have their own,” he said. “They could be independent currencies like Bitcoin. There could be corporate currencies that are blended. It could be anything."

“What [Libra]'s telling you is not it's going to be a reserve currency, but they just set the stage and let the genie out of the bottle that anybody can create a currency,” Pal said. “Bitcoin was obviously the start of that. But now these guys are saying, we can create currency baskets for trades using basic asset management to do it, and therefore anybody can.”

Earlier this month, Libra confirmed a shift to multi-currency model. The move –along with other changes noted by Facebook's Marcus – constitutes a nod to the regulatory pressure the project has faced since its official inception last summer Libra is backed by an international organization of companies that includes social media giant Facebook.