Defend Libra: Mark Zuckerberg To Testify Before Congress

The CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg will defend libra before the U.S lawmakers later this month. The House Financial Services Committee announced back on Wednesday as we read in the Libra coin news that he will testify on October 23^rd.

The hearing is titled ‘’an examination of Facebook and its impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors’’ and Zuckerberg will be the only witness. While the details are really vague, the press releases show that the Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters has already drafted the ‘’Keep Big Tech Out Of Finance Act’’ and she also previously called for FAcebook to stop all further developments of Libra until the lawmakers’ concerns were addressed:

 “The draft legislation prohibits large platform utilities, like Facebook, from becoming chartered, licensed or registered as a U.S. financial institution. 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.”

This month’s hearing will be the third one held by the Congress where Zuckerberg has to defend Libra since both the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee both discussed the future of the crypto project this summer. Facebook blockchain lead David Marcus already testified on the benefits that the project can bring in the future. During his hearing, the lawmakers were noticeable skeptical about the efforts that Facebook is making and they even pointed out to the company’s past track record with data privacy and other issues as major concerns.

The regulatory backlash that surrounds Libra constantly also concerned FAcebook’s launch partners and some even started going away from the project. PayPal for example, pulled out of the 28-member association last week. Mastercard and Visa are also reportedly concerned about the massive impact that the project can have on financial stability worldwide. According to the reports that we have in our blockchain news, the senators Brian Schatz and Sherrod Brown, both of which are members of the Banking Committee, warned the visa CEO saying that they are participating in an association that could open them to further regulatory scrutiny.