Facebook Is Inviting Washington to Regulate Libra — Good Luck With That
Is it a bank? Is it anonymous? Is it an investment? The questions are unending
Last week, Facebook faced a grilling before both the House and Senate over its Libra cryptocurrency project. The committees did not seem to be fans of Facebook’s plans to create a global currency. Some of their concerns were due to a general distrust of Facebook, but also because it’s hard even for members of Congress to understand what Libra is.
That might be an obstacle to crafting the regulation that Facebook is inviting.
In the company’s opening statements to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Facebook promised that it would not offer the Libra cryptocurrency until “we have fully addressed regulatory concerns and received appropriate approvals.” In a rare twist, Facebook is inviting regulation before it launches a product, rather than after, as if it were aiming to both move slow and not break stuff.
The hearings, though, showed why that may be difficult for the regulators. If there was one guiding theme for the House committee hearing — aside from a general disdain of Facebook over its myriad past privacy failures — it was confusion over what, exactly, Libra is and how it fits into…
