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"Colombian regulation should allow the exchange of Libra, which will be well backed, thus permitting its use as a means of payment."
— Juan C. Pryor, quoted in La República
In June 2019, Facebook announced Libra — a digital currency managed by the Geneva-based Libra Association, backed by low-volatility assets including bank deposits and government securities, and designed to rival the dollar for everyday transactions.
The announcement was arguably the moment that stablecoins entered mainstream financial policy discourse. With 2.3 billion monthly active users and integration planned for Messenger and WhatsApp, Facebook wasn't just launching another cryptocurrency — it was proposing a parallel payments infrastructure at global scale.
The Regulatory Question
For Colombia and the broader LATAM region, the question wasn't whether Libra was interesting — it clearly was — but whether existing regulatory frameworks could accommodate it. At the time, the answer was: not obviously. Most jurisdictions lacked clear rules for asset-backed digital currencies that didn't fit neatly into existing definitions of electronic money or securities.
My view, shared with La República, was that Colombian regulation should evolve to allow Libra's exchange and use as a payment instrument — provided the backing structure held up to scrutiny. The logic was straightforward: a well-backed stablecoin from a trusted issuer could extend financial access to populations underserved by traditional banking.
Libra never launched in its original form — regulatory pressure from central banks and finance ministries ultimately forced Facebook to restructure and rebrand the project as Diem, which was later abandoned. But the debate it sparked directly shaped the stablecoin regulatory frameworks being written today.