It is one thing for academics in Asia to rant against the tyranny of the dollar, or to make cheery forecasts about its impending eclipse by the Chinese yuan, but now that Facebook wants to spawn a new global currency — one that could meet the “daily financial needs of billions of people” and perhaps rival the dollar one day — central banks in Beijing, Jakarta, Manila or Mumbai will not exactly be ecstatic.

To them, the prospect of being at the mercy of a cabal of tech czars and venture capitalists sitting in Switzerland could well mean swapping the yoke of the US Federal Reserve for a less predictable and potentially more sinister dependence...

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