On Friday afternoon, four additional cracks appeared in the Libra Foundation when Visa, MasterCard, eBay, and Stripe joined the earlier refugee from Libra, PayPal, and announced they were going to take a pass on joining and funding the Libra Foundation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
What was odd was the revelation that Libra had been taking a lot of incoming from governments — United States, Germany, France — including a letter from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hi).
They had written directly to Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe discouraging their participation as well as warning of a “high level of scrutiny from regulators not only on Libra-related payment activities, but on all payment activities.”
What strikes a reasonable person as odd is the realization that these Senators are part of the Legislative Branch and not the Executive Branch of the US Government. Legislators — when they are not going 24/7 impeachment — are supposed to write laws, not regulate cryptocurrency. Regulation is an Executive Branch function acting through the pertinent, applicable departments.
Sherrod Brown, not content just to plunge the knife in, twisted it, saying, “Large payment companies are wise to avoid legitimizing Facebook’s private, global currency. Facebook is too big and too powerful, and it is unconscionable for financial companies to aid in monopolizing our economic infrastructure. I trust others will see the wisdom of avoiding this ill-conceived undertaking.”
Big weeks for Libra and Facebook next couple of weeks when the Zuck testifies in the House on 23 October and the top Libra guy, David Marcus, will be in town himself, next week.
I have predicted that Libra Foundation never launches Libra — the cryptocurrency. I stand by that prediction.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Great weekend.