Lawmakers Amp Up Pressure on Facebook to Halt Libra Cryptocurrency Development

U.S. lawmakers repeatedly pressed Facebook's top blockchain executive to halt development of the Libra cryptocurrency during a contentious hearing on the project Wednesday.

David Marcus, the CEO of Facebook's subsidiary Calibra, reiterated his promise that Libra would not launch until regulators' concerns were fully addressed.

Like the previous day's Senate Banking Committee hearing, Wednesday's panel was wide-ranging, with lawmakers grilling Marcus on everything from money laundering to financial stability to whether Libra should be regulated as an exchange-traded fund or a bank.

Rep. Brad Sherman, perhaps crypto's loudest Congressional critic, suggested that Libra was somehow more dangerous to America than 9/11. Comparatively sober colleagues wondered if the project would become "Systemically important," Beltway-speak for "Too big to fail."

Rep. Sean Duffy, for example, complimented Marcus for Facebook's innovation but asked if Libra would ban controversial speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos or Louis Farrakhan from using the platform, as Facebook has done in its flagship social network.

"Personally, I believe we shouldn't be in the business of telling people what they can do with their money," Marcus responded, adding a caveat that such policies would be up to the governing council of the Libra Association consortium.

"Do you believe the currency is a public good? Do you believe Libra should be a public good?".

Marcus also provided more detail than before about the makeup of the basket of fiat currencies that would back Libra.

Porter then asked what's to stop the Libra Association from swapping out the reserve from 50 percent greenbacks to, say, 100 Venezuelan bolivares.

The first part of the hearing wrapped up around 18:45 UTC. After Marcus, a panel of expert witnesses, including former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Gary Gensler, is scheduled to testify.