Rep. Waters Says Congress Will Continue Review of Facebook’s Libra

The chairwoman of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee has said that the body will continue scrutinizing Facebook’s cryptocurrency, Libra.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) released a statement on August 23 that provided a planned schedule for fall 2019. Included on the list is  a pledge to carry on with a review of Libra as well as the wallet software being developed by Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary.

Waters has long called for more regulatory scrutiny of the Menlo Park-based social media giant’s leap into the digital asset space.

In June, Waters called for a moratorium and congressional examination of the project, just two days after the Libra Association – a consortium of 28 corporate, non-profit, and regulatory bodies overseeing Libra’s development and release – made their announcement.

In July, she and ranking congressional members furthered this line of inquiry which included a public grilling of  Facebook’s Libra project head David Marcus.

She asked:

“Will you stop dancing around this question and commit here in this committee … to a moratorium until Congress enacts an appropriate legal framework to ensure that Libra and Calibra do what you claim it will do?”

For his part, Secretary Steve Mnuchin said in the wake of Libra’s launch that the project raises significant concerns regarding monetary policy and international finance. He referred to the concerns potential facilitation of terrorist financing, money laundering, and human and drug trafficking as a national security issue.

Marcus said Libra will meet all the necessary regulatory qualifications for the countries it intends to operate in.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) by AfDB Group/Flickr