EU Antitrust Chief Says Libra Poses A Monopoly Risk

EU Antitrust Chief Margrethe Vesager expressed concerns that Facebook’s Libra could potentially violate antitrust laws and become a monopolist on the market as we are reading more in the coming altcoin news below.

The EU regulators are investigating whether Libra is a threat to healthy competition and to address this, Vestager says that the regulators are looking deeper into the potential of the anti-competitive threats posed by Libra:

 “We can even look at new services even before they’re introduced. We’re looking at whether those proposals create risks for competition, so we can be ready to act swiftly if an intervention were to prove necessary. That’s what we’re doing right now, with Facebook’s plan for a new cryptocurrency, known as Libra.”

Vestager stated during the conference in Bergen, Norway that it is very important to deter monopolies because ‘’competition makes champions.’’ This happens by forcing the corporations to do better and to serve their customers and the job is to always protect the customers. The EU Antitrust chief joins a growing chorus of the European regulators who are concerned about the many risks Libra is posing. Another member of the European Central Bank’s executive board also shared her opinion saying that Libra is a cartel-like cryptocurrency. Yves Mersch also warned that the Libra network will be extremely centralized and will operate as a monopoly since Facebook itself is in its own way a social media monopolist.

On the contrary, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin claim to be decentralized and that they democratize the financial services. Mersch also warned that Facebook’s data leak scandals prove that Libra is a huge risk to the public because ‘’ unaccountable entities with questionable track record’’ should not be trusted with people’s financial data. Some lawmakers are even demanding that Libra should be banned before it even launches. As congresswoman Maxine Waters stated, Facebook should suspend the development of Libra because the cryptocurrency could be used to facilitate money –laundering but also finance terrorism.

Another congresswoman Sherman believes that a ban is necessary because cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Libra will undermine the value of the US dollar as we previously read in the best cryptocurrency news sites reports.