What Indonesia Reveals About Facebook's Libra Plan

Facebook published plans for the Libra cryptocurrency in seven languages, including Indonesia's Bahasa - a move that offers perhaps the clearest glimpse of what Facebook's fintech ascent might look like.

"Indonesia has the fourth-highest number of Facebook users in the world," Pang Xue Kai, co-founder of the Indonesian crypto exchange Tokocrypto, told CoinDesk.

"If Facebook's Libra can address the [local] issues, it has the potential to succeed."

According to the annual media report released by We Are Social and Hootsuite, Indonesia has the world's highest rate of Facebook post engagement among internet users, over 4 percent, and the highest frequency of online shopping, with 86 percent of Indonesian survey respondents saying they bought something online in the past month.

Since nearly 10 percent of Indonesian respondents said they also own some cryptocurrency, double American percentage, Facebook couldn't have dreamed up a better market for Libra.

QCP Capital co-founder Joshua Ho, a trader who works closely with Indonesian exchange Tokocrypto, told CoinDesk Facebook's Libra ecosystem could be a "Gamechanger" in Indonesia.

Add all this to the World Bank's estimate that Indonesia is a collection of islands with one of the world's largest unbanked populations, 97 million adults as of 2017, and it's clear why Facebook prioritized publishing its crypto materials in the native language.

Facebook's omnipresence in Indonesia raises questions about how Libra will impact retail users.

"While Facebook currently promises that it will not triangulate its vast hordes of personal data with financial transaction information to probe ever deeper into the minds of its human subjects, there are no cryptographic or technical privacy guarantees in Libra to prevent Facebook from doing exactly this."

CoinDesk contributor Daniel Evans noted Facebook's Libra Association doesn't have any partners in the region yet and may not be able to operate "Freely."