PARIS (Reuters) - France and Germany have agreed to block Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, the French finance ministry said on Friday.

In a joint statement, the two governments affirmed that “no private entity can claim monetary power, which is inherent to the sovereignty of nations”.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday that Facebook’s new cryptocurrency should not be allowed to operate in Europe while concerns persist about sovereignty and persistent financial risks.

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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland is the bank for global central bankers. It’s the stodgiest of stodgy institutions, in other words, and it’s been slow-moving when it comes to cryptocurrency. Now it appears to be picking up the pace, however, spurred by Facebook’s announcement this month that it plans to issue a digital currency called Libra.

Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek was, as he says in the 1990 introduction to his Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, one of the chief “gold bugs” of the 20th century. And he reminded us, so long as politicians want to control money, gold-backed currency is essential to protect our liberty from the politics of inflation.

After weeks of anticipation, the day has finally arrived: In a dramatic push into uncharted waters for the social media behemoth that saw Mark Zuckerberg make overtures to his former arch-nemises (the Winklevii), Facebook has finally published the white paper for its long-awaited stablecoin, "Libra".