Facebook’s Libra has been receiving a lot of attention since it was first revealed. It has been subject to international scrutiny, analyst scrutiny, and even US congressional scrutiny. U.S congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio’s 8th congressional district added his voice to the whole Libra debate.
While in an interview with Noded Bitcoin Podcast co-hosts Pierre Rochard and Michael Goldstein, the conversation went towards Facebook’s Libra. The differences between Facebook’s proposed currency and Bitcoin as came up. Davidson has never been a fan of Libra and once called it “shitcoin” earlier this year. Davidson has a lot of time for Bitcoin though. He stated that his first encounter with Bitcoin was back in 2013.
The congressman had heard lots of arguments about how digital currencies are to be classified. According to him, Libra’s degree of centralization requires it to be regulated as a security. Davidson believes this because the group that controls the network can make changes to the currency that can affect its exchange rate. For example, Libra holders could be harmed financially if it was decided that a much weaker currency, such as the Venezuelan bolivar, should be added to Libra’s fiat currency reserves.
The congressman then went on to imply that Facebook will be better off integrating Bitcoin, instead of trying to launch their own digital currency. He gave an example of Cash App, saying that it was able to fly under the radar by simply integrating Bitcoin instead of starting something new. When directly asked if he believed that Facebook would be better off going that direction, he said; “I hope they try it because it’d be a way better idea than Libra,”
He went on to build his case by pointing out that Libra has built its appeal using Bitcoin’s value proposition as decentralized uncontrollable digital money. Davidson then went to bring up what almost every Libra critic has brought up at least once before. This is Facebook’s content tampering and filtering. He questioned whether people would want that kind of tampering when it came to transactions in digital currency.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to appear before congress on October 23 to defend the Libra Project. This will be a follow up to the presentation made back in July that left law makers with more questions than answers.
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