Behind the Scenes of Our Deep Dive on Libra

Pulling back the curtain on Facebook's digital currency, we share details that aren't in our forthcoming feature.

Tomorrow we’re publishing a feature about Libra, the audacious digital currency plan spearheaded by Facebook. Due to the grandiosity of its vision, the severity of critics’ objections, and the uncertainty about its future, Libra could be considered the defining fintech story of the year. We’ve included it as part of a package of 25 “big ideas” that are poised to shape the next decade in our January issue of the magazine.

Over the past couple months, I collected more material than could ever possibly fit into the story. Today, in a Ledger newsletter exclusive, I’m pulling back the curtain on my reporting and sharing some highlights that are not in the feature.

This is our last edition of The Ledger newsletter before we break for the holidays. You can count this special offering as a thank you for reading us this year.

Here are the takeaways.

• The Libra Association is still apparently being bankrolled by Facebook. Founding members of the Swiss nonprofit—which is comprised of 21 companies, including Uber, Spotify, and Coinbase, and is now tasked with caretaking Libra—have yet to wire their $10 million minimum membership fee-cum-initial investment to the organization, though they have “committed” to doing so, a person familiar with such transactions at one of the member companies tells me. Presumably, members are first waiting to see whether there’s any real hope of the project getting off the ground, given all the regulatory blowback. (Facebook referred my query about this to the Libra Association, which declined to comment.)

• Facebook employees are already using Libra. If someone on the Calibra team—Facebook’s digital wallet subsidiary—shows up late for a meeting, that person is expected to forfeit virtual coins as a penalty. These Libra tokens exist on a “testnet” and have no reserve backing, so they’re pretty much Monopoly money. “I’m kind of chronically late so I pay up all the time,” Kevin Weil, Calibra’s VP of product, tells me. (Given the late send on today’s Ledger newsletter, I can empathize.)

• One of the most significant technologies associated with Libra is a new programming language called “Move.” The language is designed to safely move around digital assets that are tied to a blockchain, the database tech that underpins cryptocurrencies. Sam Blackshear, a Facebook software engineer who is one of the architects, assures me the name is not a reference to Facebook’s erstwhile battle cry, “Move fast and break things”; rather, it’s a reference to an esoteric programming concept called “move semantics.” The Move team’s unofficial motto is more circumspect: “Move language doesn’t break things.”

• If Calibra lets third party developers build their own digital currency features for the wallet, the business impact could be monumental. “We believe this new financial infrastructure could be viewed similar to Apple’s introduction of iOS to developers a decade ago,” says Zachary Schwartzman, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. Calibra could be as important to Facebook as the iPhone was to Apple, in other words.

There is plenty more in the feature. You can pick up a copy on newsstands later this month, or read a digital version on Fortune.com tomorrow.

Happy holidays, dear readers. The Ledger will be on winter hiatus until January 8th.

See you in 2020.