Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Bloomberg: Facebook Libra Payments Partners Waver on Cryptocurrency

This recent article in Bloomberg seems to confirm something we speculated on here. We said that it seemed like that the Project Libra currency proposed by Facebook  had managed to get the attention of potential regulators and that our guess was that whatever needed to be done to prevent this project from becoming any kind of serious threat to the present system would likely be done. Below is a key part of the Bloomberg article linked above which tends to confirm this analysis.

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"Four payments companies that have joined Facebook Inc. as founding members of the Libra Association are wavering over whether to officially sign on to the cryptocurrency project, according to people familiar with the matter.
Executives at the payments companies believe Facebook oversold the extent to which regulators were comfortable with the project and are concerned about the perception the social network hasn’t behaved responsibly in other areas -- such as how it has handled user data and privacy, the people said."
. . . . 
"Even as Facebook has publicly drawn fire, the Libra organization’s members have worked in the background to hash out details of a chartering document to formally establish the non-profit so that the group’s work to stand up the payments system can move forward.
The work has proven contentious due to continued uncertainty about the regulatory implications of the project, according to two of the people."
Please click here to read the full article in Bloomberg


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Added notes: This story is getting a lot of interest in various news outlets. Below are a few other article links on it. Further below, is a link to a letter signed by two US Congressmen to the Federal Reserve that may be of interest as well. A thank you to Dr. Judy Shelton for posting the link to this letter on her Twitter feed.

Ariticle links: 



Bi Partisan Letter to the Federal Reserve from two US Congressmen

Selected quotes from the letter linked just above:

"We are concerned that the primacy of the US Dollar could be in long term jeopardy from wide adoption of digital fiat currencies"

. . . . 

"The Facebook/Libra proposal, if implemented, could remove important aspects of financial governance outside of US jurisdiction."

The letter goes on to ask the Federal Reserve if it is exploring the development of a "US dollar digital currency". The letter is signed by Republican Congressman French Hill of Arkansas and Democratic Congressman Bill Foster of Illinois. It's rare when people on opposite sides of the political aisle agree on anything these days, but clearly these two agree on this.










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