According to an article from Seeking Alpha, the founding members of the Libra Association met in Geneva to develop a charter. Of the 28 original members, 21 ultimately formed the association. Those left include Coinbase, Uber, Spotify, Lyft, PayU and Vodafone. Notable companies to drop out, are Mastercard, Visa, eBay, Stripe, Mercado Pago, Booking and PayPal. At present, PayU is the only payment-company member left.
A few days later, Rep. Maxine Waters, chairwoman of the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services, announced Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the committee on Oct. 23. The hearing, titled “An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors,” will feature, at present, only testimony from Zuckerberg, according to information from Waters office. Previously, Waters, along with several other members of Congress, made comments indicating some skepticism regrading Facebook's ambitious project, and called for a moratorium on its plans.
“Because Facebook is already in the hands of over a quarter of the world’s population, it is imperative that Facebook and its partners immediately cease implementation plans until regulators and Congress have an opportunity to examine these issues and take action,” wrote the lawmakers. “During this moratorium, we intend to hold public hearings on the risks and benefits of cryptocurrency-based activities and explore legislative solutions. Failure to cease implementation before we can do so, risks a new Swiss-based financial system that is too big to fail.”
Among those who wrote in objection to the new plans were:
- Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Chairwoman of the Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets Subcommittee
- Rep. William Lacy Clay, Chairman of the Housing, Community Development and Insurance Subcommittee
- Rep. Al Green, Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
- Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, Chairman of the Task Force on Financial Technology
This summer, Waters hosted a hearing titled, “Examining Facebook’s Proposed Cryptocurrency and Its Impact on Consumers, Investors, and the American Financial System,” which featured testimony from David Marcus, the CEO of Calibra, the cryptocurrency's wallet.
From Twitter
WIRED@WIRED
Even by Facebook standards, it’s been a tumultuous few weeks for Libra. Its association has had 7 defections, and a FB subsidiary, Calibra, was sued over its logo. Now it has to set up governance and policy structures. In other words, the hard stuff
Draft legislation has also been proposed to prohibit "large platform utilities, like Facebook, from becoming chartered, licensed or registered as a U.S. financial institution," according to information from U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. "The bill also prohibits large platform utilities from establishing, maintaining, or operating a digital asset that is intended to be widely used as medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, or any other similar function as defined by the Federal Reserve."
