Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg tried to defend his highly criticised cryptocurrency project, the Libra, before the US House of Representative’s Committee on Financial Services on Wednesday 23 October.
After a three-hour hearing, the American CEO tried to calm things down and assured on several occasions that the Libra would not be launched without all the necessary authorisations from the regulators, thus agreeing to postpone the launch of the project, which is scheduled to start in 2020.
He also left the door open to a revision of the initial project, admitting that a dollar-based cryptocurrency would probably be better received by the American regulator, while pointing out that the issue was still dividing the project partners.
From the outset, the Libra project has provoked an outcry from regulators and governments and has recently suffered some setbacks after several of its partners decided to leave the project.
The G7 countries have recently been very clear: no stable digital currency projects, such as the Libra, should be launched until regulatory and supervisory issues and risks have been resolved (see EUROPE 12352/14).
On the European side, Paris, Berlin and Rome have even announced that they are jointly preparing a series of measures to ban the Libra in the EU (see EUROPE 12353/11).
See Mark Zuckerberg's opening statement: http://bit.ly/2Wbnzsh (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)