Libra Hearing: ‘Toddler With Matches and the Game of Trust’

Linas Kmieliauskas
Last updated: | 2 min read

On Tuesday, Republican and Democratic Senators were grilling social media giant Facebook over its plans together with at least another 27 partners to launch the Libra project.

David Marcus. Source: a video screenshot

“Facebook has demonstrated through scandal after scandal that it doesn’t deserve our trust. We’d be crazy to give them a chance to let them experiment with people’s bank accounts,” Democratic senator Sherrod Brown said, comparing Facebook to a toddler that is playing with matches.

The Senate Banking Committee was questioning David Marcus, co-creator of Libra, head of their Calibra wallet, who had to respond to multiple questions why would anyone trust Facebook.

“I don’t trust you guys. Instead of cleaning up your house you are launching into a new business model,” Republican senator Martha McSally said.

Marcus reiterated his previous statement that Facebook is only one of 28 companies that aim to launch the Libra project and added that “I know we have to earn people’s trust for a very long period of time.”

“Facebook will not offer the Libra digital currency until we have fully addressed regulatory concerns and received appropriate approvals,” Marcus stressed in his opening statement, later adding that he would accept his salary in libra and trust all of his assets in this digital token.

Moreover, answering a question whether Calibra will make data about their users’ transactions available to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Marcus said that now taxpayers are obliged to report their transactions by themselves, however, the Libra Association is “happy to work with the IRS” in order to lift this “burden” from Calibra users.

Also, the head of Calibra said that the company won’t use existing Facebook accounts to onboard users and people will need to create new accounts, while “other wallets can enable Libra immediately and we’re not in that position.” Additionally, Marcus confirmed, that Facebook won’t embed third party wallets on their products such as the WhatsApp messaging service. 
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On Wednesday, David Marcus will participate at another hearing, this time, before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee.
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