Its easy to get swept up in the glossy jargon surrounding Facebook s latest capital-i Idea. The social network is offering the world something called Libra that will not only serve as a decentralized blockchain, but also a low-volatility cryptocurrency and of course a smart contract platform, all at the same time.

In a world of high-fidelity communications, Facebook claims, Libra will allow more people to access the financial ecosystem. This is, supposedly, innovation with a conscience, an alternative to payday loans and the high and unpredictable fees of the banking system. Above all, it is new, new, new.

In fact, what Facebook is proposing is a really stupid investment scheme masquerading as a digital currency. Its a proposal that immediately demands regulatory scrutiny of Facebook from every financial authority in the world. For a company that has spent the past two years engaged in mass privacy violations, accidental corporate alliances with authoritarian agitators and livestreams of outright terrorism , Facebooks attempt to enter the world of high finance with so slipshod an idea can only be described as delusional.

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg clearly havent thought this through. Much of the so-called white paper describing Libras structure and standards consists of vague generalities. For all its cutting-edge verbiage, the outline for Libra relies on the ideas behind the gold standard that prevailed at the turn of the 20th century. Under this monetary regime, governments guaranteed that their currencies could be exchanged for a specific quantity of gold. If you had in your possession a $1 bill, you could exchange that piece of paper for 23.22 grains of gold at the U.S. Treasury, no questions asked.