The US House Financial Services Committee has scheduled the hearing of Facebook’s Libra coin for July 17, according to an official press release.
Titled the “Examining Facebook’s Proposed Cryptocurrency and Its Impact on Consumers, Investors, and the American Financial System,” the hearing will be attended by the full committee of the House including its chairperson Rep. Maxine Waters.
Waters was critical about Facebook’s crypto initiative from the beginning and even requested the social media giant to halt its development process of creating a digital currency. In addition, the company’s troubled past with data privacy is also raising concerns among the lawmakers about the implication of its Blockchain project.
“It’s very important for them to stop right now what they’re doing so that we can get a handle on this,” Waters told CNBC on Thursday. “We’ve got to protect our consumers. We just can’t allow them to go to Switzerland with all of its associates and begin to compete with the dollar.”
Two consecutive hearings
The House’s hearing is scheduled just a day after representatives from Facebook will face a hearing before the United States’ Senate. The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs will primarily examine data privacy issues surrounding the new currency.
Though it has been in the media for a while, Facebook officially released the whitepaper of its digital currency last Tuesday. The company is developing a blockchain-based currency for all its platforms and is targeting the lucrative remittance industry.
Though the private sector is praising the social media giants initiative, it is facing a massive backlash from lawmakers and regulators around the world. Yesterday, Finance Magnates reported that the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) issued a warning that Facebook’s new Stablecoin project could pose a threat to the dominance of the global banking sector.
Meanwhile, France is planning to form a cryptocurrency task force for the G7 countries to ensure the regulatory needs of digital assets.
