Mark Zuckerberg stated that with Libra they will be discussing with the regulators “however long it takes”.
The CEO of Facebook, in fact, during a conference call on the results of the second quarter of 2019 held on July 24th (and a transcript of which was published), answered an explicit question:
“Mark, how are you thinking about the opposition that you received so far around Libra? Does it change your view of the time frame at all in terms of rolling out the currency?”
His answer was:
“Sure. So on Libra, and similar to our approach on some of the important social issues that we faced around encryption and content regulation and things like that, we get that these are really important and sensitive spaces. So our approach has been to try to have a very open dialogue about this. Facebook from a few years ago would have probably just showed up and tried to release a product on our own, now the approach on all of these fronts is to outline the ideas and the values that we think an eventual service should have. We’ve opened a period of – however long it takes to address regulators and different experts and constituents’ questions about this and then figure out what the best way to move forward is. And that’s certainly what we’re planning to do with Libra. So we worked with the 27
other members of the Association to publish the white paper to put the idea out there, expecting that this is a very important and heavily regulated area and that there were going to be a lot of questions. And we’re going to have to work through that. So I think we’re currently the process of doing that. We are trying to provide a safe and stable and well-regulated product, so that’s always been the strategy and we’ll continue to engage here”.
That “however long it takes” is very similar to the “whatever it takes“ of ECB Governor Mario Draghi pronounced in 2012 in the midst of a financial crisis, which became famous for its ability to reassure the markets about the future of the euro”.
In this way, Zuckerberg confirms that there will be no leap forward and that they would also be ready to extend the period of time needed to dispel all the major doubts of the regulators before putting Libra on the market.
At this point, the hypothesis of launching by mid-2020 could also be called into question, because it is not certain that one year is sufficient time to reach some sort of agreement with the regulators. It should not be forgotten, in fact, that the current laws may not necessarily be fully sufficient to reassure regulators of the doubts that the draft has raised, so much so that it may even be necessary to draft new regulations.
