David Marcus, CEO of Facebook’s Calibra, avers to the House Financial Services Committee hearing on “Examining Facebook’s Proposed Cryptocurrency and Its Impact on Consumers, Investors, and the American Fiscal System” on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 17, 2019.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters
Telecommunications operator Vodafone has left Facebook’s Libra League, the group confirmed on Tuesday.
The British company is the eighth to abandon Facebook’s digital currency project, joining the wishes of Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, eBay, Stripe, Booking Holdings and Mercado Pago. The departure was first reported by CoinDesk.
“We can authenticate that Vodafone is no longer a member of the Libra Association. Although the makeup of the Association members may change over epoch, the design of libra’s governance and technology ensures the Libra payment system will remain resilient,” the Libra Coalition said in a statement. “The Association is continuing the work to achieve a safe, transparent, and consumer-friendly implementation of the Libra payment procedure.”
Vodafone will shift resources that were previously intended for Libra to M-Pesa, the company’s digital payment mending that is already serving six African nations, according to the CoinDesk report.
In a statement, Vodafone said it did not rule out the chance of working with the Libra Association in the future.
Since Facebook announced libra in June, the cryptocurrency has been stonewalled by be connected withs from lawmakers and regulators around the world. Facebook has promised it will not launch its corresponding Calibra digital billfold until libra is approved by U.S. regulators.
The Libra Association was originally made up of 28 corporate backers, who are meant to commandeer govern libra the libra currency. The founding members were expected to invest a minimum of $10 million to hard cash the operating costs of the association and launch an incentive program to drive adoption, according to Facebook’s initial announcement of the undertaking.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in July said that libra raises “serious concerns with respect to privacy, money laundering, consumer protection, financial stability” and the Fed had launched a working group to examine it.
Facebook did not right away respond to requests for comment.
Read the full CoinDesk article here.
–CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this look into.
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