Stable-Coin Series: Libra Looks Confident About Its Launch Date Despite Regulatory Obstacles

Facebook’s crypto-project appears to be highly confident about the launch of its aspiring ‘Libra coin’ despite the series of regulatory hurdles. 

French and German regulators have very recently come up with a new attack on Facebook’s Libra which could be the major setback, European authorities in their statements: it is a threat to the financial sovereignty of nations. In response, the Libra Association has doubled down, promising to work with regulators, but committing to a 2020 launch.

France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz expressed their concerns in a joint statement issued at a meeting of euro-zone finance ministers in Helsinki.

The officials from 26 central banks met with Libra representatives in Basel on Monday to understand the intricacies and check on the threat the digital currency may pose to the financial stability in the Euro area. The chairman of the meeting, Benoît Coeuré, advocated that “the bar for regulatory approval will be very high” for Libra to operate in the region.

While on the contrary, interviewing with a French publication, Les Echoes, the general director of the Libra Association Bertrand Perez appeared reasonably confident that the Libra could prove itself and change the mindset of skeptics.

Perez came up with the opinion that the regulators have misunderstood the crypto-project. He further maintained that the stablecoin will launch as planned in the H2 of 2020. 

"We are not going to make money creation. We are not here to do the work of the banks," said Perez to Les Echos. "We will not become a new BlackRock. This is why the fears about the destabilizing aspect that this reserve could have on the monetary policy of the central banks whose currencies appear in our basket do not seem to us to be justified. It is their monetary policies that will influence the Libra through the basket and not the other way around."

While Facebook's David Marcus jumped into the debate on Twitter to substantiate his colleague, by claiming "Libra will be backed 1:1 by a basket of strong currencies". 

In spite of the regulatory resistance, the head of the Libra Association, the governing body of Facebook’s Libra project, Bertrand Perez, reportedly hinted that Libra coin is most likely to be launched during H2 of 2020.