Federal Reserve chair: they have "very, very high" expectations for Libra

Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve has stated that the agency will be taking a hard look at Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, promising the social media giant will be held to very high standards, CryptoDaily reports.

“Libra’s a new thing; we are looking at it very carefully. Given the possible scale of it, I think that our expectations — from a consumer protection standpoint, from a regulatory standpoint — are going to be very, very high. […] Authority for overseeing Libra is going to be in several places, but I think that the big picture is we are going to be looking really carefully at it,” he said.

Powell isn’t the only one concerned about Libra. While many believe the upcoming stablecoin poses little threat to Bitcoin, government agencies around the world are more concerned about the threat it poses to fiat currencies.

Taking a similar stance, the head of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, Andrew Bailey said there are a number of hurdles facebook and Zuckerburg have to jump through before Libra can hit the market.

Others in the space have decided to see how it plays out before making any judgments. Binance chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, for example, asked the community to refrain from persecuting Facebook for mistakes they haven’t even made yet.