On Tuesday, a letter from two American senators addressed to members of the Libra Association delivered
oil on the fire
A few days after an important session for libra in Washington, senators Sherrod Brown
(Ohio) and Brian Schatz (Hawaii) sent an almost injunctive letter regarding Visa, MasterCard
and Stripe.
In the absence of sufficient details and explanations from Facebook on how the company
plan to manage certain risks, such as financing terrorism or destabilizing the financial system
world, the two statesmen "urge" the three members of the association to re-examine the situation
before moving forward. “You should be concerned that weaknesses in the management systems of
Facebook's risks will become yours. But you may not be able to fix them.
effectively”, write the two senators.
This new obstacle on the road to libra therefore arises barely a few days after the sending of another
mail. On Sunday evening, the "Financial Times" revealed the content of a letter sent this time by
Brussels over the past week.
Libra divides Europe
In its letter, the European Commission asks Facebook a whole series of questions that are ultimately very
close to those of the American senators. This questionnaire, developed on the initiative of Valdis Dombrovskis,
European Commissioner for Financial Services, should serve to shed more concrete light on the issues
of the American project and above all the need (or not) to establish a legal framework for this famous currency.
On the Libra front, Europeans are moving forward divided. France, for example, leads the opposition. There is a
months, Bruno Le Maire believed that the “monetary sovereignty” of the main European economies was
at stake. “We cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil”, reacted then the
French Minister of Economy in a speech given at a conference at the Cooperation Organization
and Economic Development (OECD) on cryptocurrencies.
Without real unity, the fate of digital currency in Europe looks complicated. Brussels fears
effect that a green light in one country or another of the Old Continent does not turn into a passport and does not allow
free to operate throughout the Union. Recently, Benoît Cœuré, member of the Executive Board of the ECB,
warned that “regulatory approval for libra will be very high”.
In our newspapers, Bertrand Perez, one of Facebook's cryptocurrency initiators, claimed to want
"list one by one" the fears raised by the various governments in order to be able to reduce them.
Disaffection of members
The political world is not the only one to wonder. Within the very alliance that generated the association
installed in Geneva, the spirits are heated, or rather cooled. At the very beginning of the week, following
leaks in the American Sunday press, PayPal has confirmed its withdrawal from the Libra project. For alone
explanation, the American online payment service replied that it wanted to “focus on its mission
to democratize access to financial services for underserved populations".

This decision comes at a bad time, since other partners were already expressing their hesitations a few days
earlier. The "Wall Street Journal" refers to the risk of seeing major financial partners withdraw from the
free. Visa, MasterCard and Stripe top the list. These groups would in any event have refused to provide
public support for the future cryptocurrency.
In five days, the signature of a formal charter should bring together, in Switzerland, the 27 remaining members of
the libra alliance. Given the abundant news around this currency, it is currently difficult to say whether this
that day, everyone will be present around the table.