Nir Kshetri

Many people in the western world have come out in criticism of Facebook's newly launched digital currency, Libra. However, they need to realize it is not targeted at them, but for people in developing countries.

Cryptocurrency fraudsters have swindled their victims out of hundreds of millions – even billions – of dollars. What do they do to earn people's trust and then take their money?

Many developing countries don’t have a working system of tracking property rights, and what they do have can be fragile and incomplete. In Haiti, for instance, a large earthquake in 2010 destroyed all the municipal buildings that stored documents confirming many small farmers’ ownership of the land they worked.