Facebook’s highly anticipated stablecoin project, Libra, has now attracted another controversy with the shocking statement given by the Swiss President and Finance Minister, Ueli Maurer. The statement given by the dignitary read that the Libra project has “failed in its current form,” as was reported by Swiss Network SRF on Friday.
The news about the launch of the Libra project was made public in the earlier part of 2019. It was presented as a stablecoin project which will be pegged by a basket of currencies that will ensure the investors with the highest standards of security. However, contrary to the expectation, the project garnered a lot of negative attention from the economic community worldwide as the governments feared the loss of sovereignty of their native currencies. The regulators have criticized Libra, stating that it might nurture illicit activities like terror financing. They have also shown their concerns over the privacy and data protection methodologies followed by Facebook.
The Swiss government leader remarked that Libra would not achieve its expected success streak because its ideology of backing the stablecoin with a basket of currencies, including an array of business entities and non-profit groups, will not be appreciated and accepted by the central banking organizations around the world.
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Interestingly, the Libra project, which is slated to mark its entry in the financial market in 2020, has been under constant pressure in the past few months primarily because of the withdrawal of major companies from supporting the project. Globally renowned payment processing firms like PayPal, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, etc. have pulled their hands from the Libra project against the constant pressure build-up from regulatory bodies in the global marketspace.
Despite all the growing concerns over Libra, the Geneva-based Libra Association, which will serve as the working cradle for the stablecoin project, has always affirmed the genuineness and efficiency of the project. The organization has stated in the past that their Libra project will not affect the sovereignty of the fiat currencies but will allow the Facebook community members to indulge in trading activities at ease.
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In October, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that Libra would not be launched in the marketspace unless it gets a positive nod from all the regulatory authorities. The leader has also revealed the scaling back plans for the stablecoin in case of failure to get the necessary authorizations from the global regulatory authorities.
