The hearings on the Libra project have already took place in the Financial Services Committee of the US House of Representatives, which is chaired by one of the most active public critics of the project, Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
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This is the second part of our text reportage from the hearings. If you have missed the first part, you can read it here.
- Congressman Budd: "We must distinguish between Bitcoin and Libra."
- Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said that from all this, she realized that they are talking about a currency controlled by a coalition of huge corporations elected in an undemocratic way. Do they think that currency should be a public good? Marcus eventually replied that it was not up to him to decide how to interpret the terms.
- “Do we just have to believe that you won’t be merging Facebook’s financial data?”, Congresswoman Adams. The answer is yes. "We will compete with other wallets, so it is in our interests," added Marcus.
- What happened to Cambridge Analytica is no longer possible on the Facebook platform, Marcus said.
- “If a country has banned Libra, companies from this jurisdiction should not be members of an association. I think so,” Marcus.
- Congressman Gonzalez: “I don’t think you will ever become a decentralized network. I think you’ll have 100 people left.”
- "Two-thirds of the nodes must be accepted in order to make changes to the Libra protocol", Marcus.
- Congressman Riggleman became the only legislator who has asked questions about the technological features of the protocol, the programming language, the problems of scaling and the speed of transactions. Marcus could not answer all of them.
- Marcus dodged the question of how much Facebook has already invested in the development of Libra.
- Congresswoman Tlaib pointed out that the representatives of the companies belonging to the association are closely linked, and especially with the board of directors of Facebook. She called the association a group of friends and asked if Facebook was creating cryptomafia. Marcus claims "no", and in the future, there will be more than 100.
- Congressman Lynch said that Facebook firlstly does it, then asks for forgiveness. And always did so.
- Lynch invites Marcus to test the idea in the regulatory sandbox. "Make a commitment?". Marcus dodges.
- Congressman Emmer: "I am very pleased that after 10 years of Bitcoin, a technology that can change our lifestyle, Congress has finally noticed it. Unfortunately, some [here] want to unreasonably limit it or even ban it. They are afraid of change, especially representatives California. Emmer said that the committee should carefully study cryptocurrencies, and Libra is not a cryptocurrency. "Many here are afraid of money laundering. The US dollar and other fiat currencies are most used for criminal purposes."
- Congressman Green does not understand why Libra is needed, if the dollar is accepted everywhere, and also why there are competing currencies in Libra Reserve: the British pound, the yen, the euro.
- Marcus promises that the association will not practice partial reservations. The end