Libra Director Says Launch is Happening in Second Half of 2020

The head of the non-profit organisation behind the upcoming stablecoin from Facebook, Libra, has said that that the firm is dedicated to launching the new digital asset and clearing regulatory obstacles.

Speaking in a recent interview with the French News magazine Les Echos, the director-general of the Libra Association, Bertrand Perez claimed that the token should appear in the second half of next year.

The timing of this comment is quite ironic as jus yesterday, France's finance minister said that the nation would refuse to allow Libra to operate within its borders or throughout Europe.

Perez went onto say though that the social network doesn’t want to develop new supplies of money through the token. He made a comparison to one of the world’s biggest asset managers, BlackRock, saying that Facebook doesn’t actually want to get involved with that market.

Perez told Les Echos:

“We don’t want to become a new BlackRock. That’s why these concerns about the destabilizing effect our reserve currency could have on central banks’ fiat currencies — which figure in our basket — seem unfounded to us.”

In confirming that Libra would launch, Perez confirmed that it would be tied to a variant of different fiat currencies including the dollar and sterling, however, due to the crypto regulations set up in China, the yuan will not be involved with the stablecoin.

That being said, Beijing has put the finishing touches to its own cryptocurrency though. Central bank officials have been working and voicing their direct concerns in regards to the backing of Libra.

Despite this, the director isn’t concerned. He is confident that all the regulatory worries that will probably be fixed by the time launch come round.

“The year we’ve taken prior to release will allow us to iron out all the problems.”

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out and whether the issues plaguing libra will actually get ‘ironed out’ before launch. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!