Swiss minister predicts Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project will ‘fail’
- Posted on June 20, 2022
Swiss President and Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said on Friday (December 27, 2019) that Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project, which the social network is promoting with a group of partners, would be a “failure in its current form,” the Swiss reported this week. Chain SRF on Friday.
“Central banks will not accept the basket of currencies that Libra seeks to gain a foothold,” Ueli Maurer, chairman of the Federal Council in the rotating position of the Swiss Confederation, who will serve until the end of the year, told SRF.
Libra, one of the social media giant’s most high-profile projects with a tentative launch date of 2020, has been heavily criticized by the world’s top financial authorities.
In theory, the processing of cryptocurrencies will be handled by an independent association based in Geneva, Switzerland, to which several companies and nonprofits are affiliated.
In early October, however, the project began to split: Online payments companies PayPal and Stripe, as well as financial giants Visa and Mastercard, among others, withdrew from the proposal amid mounting pressure from U.S. and other regulators.
Criticisms point to the potential for Libra to be used for illicit purposes and highlight Facebook’s poor track record in taking care of user privacy and data protection.
Swiss minister predicts Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project will ‘fail’