Zuckerberg Faces Congress Over Libra Project

The CEO and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has officially spoken on the controversial and highly anticipated project from Calibra, the Libra stablecoin. 

Speaking before Congress this week, Zuckerberg defended the project, which is been under heavy fire from regulators from the day it was launched.

Preparing his general responses, Zuckerberg was set to tell the lawmakers that the United States risks losing “financial leadership” to other nations, specifically China if they don’t get behind Libra. 

"The idea behind Libra is that sending money should be as easy and secure as sending a message. Libra will be a global payment system fully backed by a reserve of cash and highly liquid assets. Now, I believe that this is something that needs to get built."

Later in the hearing, Congresswoman Maxine Waters the committee’s chair had the following to say:

"As I have examined Facebook's various problems, I've come to the conclusion that it would be beneficial for all if Facebook concentrates on addressing its many existing deficiencies and failures before proceeding any further on the Libra project."

Zuckerberg isn’t the first person related to the project to get grilled by regulators though as the projects head, David Marcus was recently at Capitol Hill and spoke to two committees explaining that Libra would create a more inclusive financial system.

Prior to the hearing, the Congressman, Patrick McHenry encouraged his fellow colleagues to not see Libra as a cryptocurrency at all. Speaking on Laura Shin’s Unchained podcast this week he said:

“Look, I think Libra has opened a lot of people’s eyes about the value of cryptocurrency. Libra is not cryptocurrency, however, and we need to stop lumping it together with very real, and very important projects like bitcoin.”

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