US lawmakers concerned about Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency to meet with Swiss privacy regulator

Democratic representative Maxine Waters and five other lawmakers are going to meet Switzerland’s top data protection regulator in a meeting focusing on Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency Libra.

As the chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, Waters has been vocal about her skepticism about Libra. In July, she co-signed an open letter together with other lawmakers of the committee. The letter said the announcement of the new cryptocurrency raised “serious privacy, trading, national security and monetary policy concerns for not only Facebook’s over two billion users, but also for investors, consumers, and the broader global economy.”

The letter, issued on July 2, asked Facebook and its partners to agree to a “moratorium on any movement forward on Libra”.

Now Waters and her colleagues are going to meet with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioners (FDPIC), NZZ am Sonntag reported.

In the end of July, the privacy watchdog issued a statement saying Facebook had failed to respond to an information request regarding Libra. FDPIC had asked for more information to help it clarify its oversight role.

This was after Facebook had revealed that the Libra Association, which Facebook has launched to oversee the currency, would be based in Genevea.

These are not the only officials that have raised concerns about Libra. In the beginning of August, authorities from the UK, Australia, the USA, Canada, Burkina Faso, Albania and the EU signed an open letter asking the social media giant to be more transparent about its digital currency and its infrastructure.

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