My point is that crypto‘currencices’ aren’t actually virtual currencies. They are virtual gold. Why are they called virtual ‘currencies’? Because no one would buy something called ‘virtual gold’.

Like gold, they are purchased with actual money or ‘mined’. Like gold, they can serve as a store of value, a speculative instrument, or an instrument of exchange (where parties agree to accept them as such). Unlike gold, they have no materiality, so they have no use as a physical material in making things. That’s the only difference.

So, Facebook might become the world’s biggest producer of virtual gold, though I would think it would want to minimize the speculative aspect of the thing. Accomplishing that might be its biggest challenge.

At any rate, one thing Facebook could never be is “the world’s biggest central bank.” Central banks do other things entirely. (See, for instance, Martin Oberkofler’s Response that preceded — temporally — this one.)