Formerly known as ‘Facebook coin’, or ‘Facecoin’, Libra has been a controversial asset since its announcement. According to the the United States senator and a ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sherrod Brown “recipe for more corporate power over markets and over consumers.”
Brown’s comments come through a video by @nowthisnews on Twitter posted earlier this week on 16th July just hours after the Senate Banking Committee hearing in regards to Facebook’s Libra coin.
In expressing his concern about Facebook gaining the ability to ‘force’ people to use their money and play by their rules, Brown said:
“What happens when Facebook forces businesses to quit accepting your credit card or your debit card? You could be forced to use Facebook’s new Monopoly money. What about small business owners, forced to use it or lose access to Facebook’s millions of users?”
Following today’s Senate hearing, Brown spoke to the press saying that he had his fingers crossed for a detailed privacy law that would help protect users from big firms such as the social media behemoth. Even so, he wasn’t confident in the direction that it should take.
You can watch the full video here.
This isn’t the first time a government official has spoken on Bitcoin as the former congressman Ron Paul has said in the past that he was more worried about governments holding a monopoly on money as Paul has stated:
“Historically, governments always have to have monopoly control over money and credit. Obviously that’s why we have a Federal Reserve, instead of allowing the market to operate […] governments aren’t very tolerant of competition, and they’re not even tolerant with using the Constitution to compete with the fiat dollar. Because gold and silver, you can’t use it.”
Paul recently took part in an interview for Squawk Alley on CNBC where he actually said he is a big supporter of Bitcoin and hinted that it is the future of finance, saying:
“I just don’t think the dollar is going to last. I don’t think any fiat currency lasts forever. They all self-destruct. Right now, the world is engulfed with fiat currency; they’re all paper currencies. That’s one of the other reasons the dollar holds up: What are you competing against, the euro and the yen? The competition out there isn’t any good.”
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