When it comes to crypto, there is still a long way to go before the average person truly understands it. And this fact couldn’t have been more apparent at Tuesday’s Senate hearing with David Marcus, the head of Facebook’s new crypto wallet. Lawmakers have been concerned about Facebook’s Libra ever since its announcement a few weeks ago. Many legislators, Maxine Waters included, highlighted the fact that the social media giant had been unable to stop Russian interference through Cambridge Analytica. They appealed to other elected officials to proceed very carefully. Not long after this, Donald Trump tweeted about his resentment for both Bitcoin and Libra. And on Tuesday, it was former Coinbase board member David Marcus’s responsibility to defend his cryptocurrency amid rising concerns that Facebook is attempting to turn itself into a bank.
Marcus led his argument with an appeal to lawmakers to allow the United States to become a part of something special by being one of the first countries to create crypto rules. In this way, it seemed that Marcus was attempting to spark some FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) so that legislators would worry they’d be remembered by history as backward instead of forward-thinking. Marcus also defended Facebook’s decision to put the group’s headquarters in Switzerland. This had been widely regarded as a move to avoid financial oversight by lawmakers, but Marcus insisted that it was because other big financial institutions were also headquartered in the same area.
It seems as if Facebook’s motto, “Move fast and break things,” is seen in a different light since the events of the 2016 election. While this was once considered a cute and catchy phrase, legislators are now actually concerned that Facebook will, in fact, break things. This seems like the impetus for asking Marcus whether Facebook planned to listen to lawmakers about their concerns and address them — or just move on at lightning speed as per usual. Marcus, for his part, attempted to reassure the Senate Banking Committee that Facebook plans to fully comply with all regulations moving forward — and that the Libra team will not take action until all concerns have been addressed.
At one point, Senator Sherrod Brown became particularly critical of Facebook, noting that the social media group had done nothing to earn the trust of the American people. Marcus buttoned up his argument by stating that he felt crypto is inevitable — and that the United States should figure out what to do about it.
