Libra Not Given Green Light For Sales In Europe

Libra has caused controversy since before it was announced so it’s no surprise that France has planned to block the development of the stablecoin in Europe.

CNBC reported September 12th that Bruno Le Maire, the French Finance Minister said that the nation wouldn’t permit the launch of Facebook’s proposed on the continent due to the "monetary sovereignty of states is at stake."

According to the report, Le Maire delivered the opening of the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum 2019 in Paris which went as follows:

“All these concerns around Libra are serious. So I want to say this with a lot of clarity: I want to be absolutely clear: in these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil.” 

Le Maire previously said back in June that he would ask for definite confirmation from facebook that the stablecoin would not be exploited for any illegal or illicit activities such as financing terrorism.

The finance minister went onto add that the social media’s Libra coin was an “attribute of the sovereignty of the States” and should thus “remain in the hands of the States and not of the private companies which answer to private interests".

On the other side of the globe, regulators in the United States have been very consistent in expressing their “concerns [...] with allowing a large tech company to create a privately controlled, alternative global currency.”

The rise in the price of cryptocurrencies has been often accompanied by an increase of general interest by big institutional investors and it seemingly caught the eye of Facebook. At the end of 2017, we saw a lot more people enter the market who probably never even heard of cryptocurrency and get involved with the space too.

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out with Libra going ahead in Europe. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!