Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that the company will not launch its proposed Libra cryptocurrency project before addressing the growing concerns among regulators and policy makers about the project.
Last week, Facebook’s blockchain chief David Marcus said at a US Congress hearing that the social media giant “will not offer” its proposed digital currency Libra “until we have fully addressed regulator’s concerns and received the proper approvals”. During a quarterly earnings call yesterday, Zuckerberg echoed this sentiment.
As reported by industry website Coindesk, during the call Zuckerberg admitted that in the past the company might have just launched a new product. Presently, Facebook tries to approach such things differently, according to Zuckerberg.
“We’ve opened a period of, however long it takes to address regulators and different experts and constituents’ questions about this and then figure out what the best way to move forward is,” he said, as quoted by Coindesk.
“That’s certainly what we’re planning to do with Libra. So we worked with the 27 other members of the Association to publish the white paper to put the idea out there, expecting that this is a very important and heavily regulated area and that there were going to be a lot of questions. And we’re going to have to work through that,” the CEO added.
Lawmakers and privacy watchdogs in the US have called for Facebook to halt development on the project, until the growing concerns over Libra have been addressed. In the UK, the chair of the House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Damian Collins, indicated that he didn’t trust that Facebook could safeguard the personal financial details of billions of users. And earlier this week, Switzerland’s data privacy regulator said that Facebook hadn’t responded to a request or more information on the project.
Zuckerberg said yesterday that the company was trying to “provide a safe and stable and well-regulated product, so that’s always been the strategy and we’ll continue to engage here”.
Featured image: Ink Drop / Shutterstock.com
More Resources