Facebook’s Crypto Plans Look A Lot Like The Ones The SEC Is Trying To Stop

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Publish Date:
June 27, 2019
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MarketWatch
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Summary

A bold plan to launch a new cryptocurrency by Facebook and partners looks a lot like the plans of another firm the Securities and Exchange Commission is now suing to stop.

Libra is a “global, digitally native, reserve-backed cryptocurrency built on the foundation of blockchain technology,” according to the Switzerland-based not-for-profit membership organization formed to run the initiative, Libra Association. The Libra Association says it will “be raising money in a private placement to help jumpstart the ecosystem and drive adoption.”

Libra is “more a dream than a plan,” said Stanford University’s Joseph Grundfest, primarily due to the significant regulatory uncertainty. Facebook FB, -1.05% and its partners might know what functionality they’d would like to achieve, but “they don’t really know how they are going to connect the dots to get from here to there, and how the regulators will respond,” said Grundfest, a senior faculty member with Stanford’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance and a former SEC commissioner, in a Q&A on the Stanford Law School blog.

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