The Libra cryptocurrency of Facebook has run into one more stumbling block. Not more than a month after the EU started up an antitrust probe into the initiative, executives in France have declared that they “can’t authorize” Libra on European ground.
Talking at an OECD meeting last week in Paris, Bruno Le Maire (French finance minister) claimed that Libra might put the power of governments at danger. “All these issues around Libra are grave,” he claimed, as per a translation by media. “So I need to state this with a lot of clearness: In these situations, we can’t sanction the development of Libra on European ground.”
Le Maire did not extend on his statement, but it appears likely that he aims to ban Libra in its present form if it launch wherever in Europe, instead of alone in France. Facebook has frequently claimed that it will wait until it has authoritarian sanction from all quarters before launching out Libra, but that might take a long time—and if rivals are mentioning the national security concerns and dominion of currency as purposes to ban the project, Facebook will be encountering some very important challenges certainly.
On a related note, Facebook is aware that its Libra cryptocurrency might encounter a regulatory probe, but it may not have anticipated a united front. Regulators from the EU, UK, US, and 4 other governments have asked the social media behemoth to answer various questions about how it will defend consumer data. The social media has “not met expectations of regulators” for privacy earlier, executives claimed in a joint interview, and there must be guarantees that Libra will perform better.
The regulators need to know that Libra will have “solid actions” to defend personal info, comprising adequate privacy protection tools, transparency, and a minimal portfolio of data.
