In an interview with French news magazine Les Echos on Sept. 12, Bertrand Perez, director general of the Libra Association, said the token should appear in the second half of 2020.
The head of the nonprofit organization behind Facebook’s Libra digital currency has said the company is committed to launching it and clearing regulatory hurdles.
The comments came the day France’s economy and finance minister said the country would refuse to allow Libra to operate within its borders.
Perez: “We don’t want to be like BlackRock”
As Cointelegraph reported, concerns over financial stability fuelled the resentment, with Bruno Le Maire appearing to wish to shape a hostile European Union policy towards Libra.
According to Perez, however, Facebook does not wish to create new supplies of money via the token. He drew comparisons to BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, saying the social media giant did not want to compete in that market.
“We don’t want to become a new BlackRock”, he told Les Echos, continuing:
“That’s why these concerns about the destabilizing effect our reserve currency could have on central banks’ fiat currencies – which figure in our basket – seem unfounded to us.”
Facebook will resolve gov’t worries
Perez likewise confirmed Libra, upon launch, would be tied to a selection of major world currencies, but notably not the Chinese yuan.
As Cointelegraph previously noted, Beijing is putting the finishing touches to its own digital currency, with central bank officials already voicing direct worries of their own about Libra’s backing.
Nonetheless, Perez is confident that all the regulatory difficulties could be solved by the launch.
“The year we’ve taken prior to release will allow us to iron out all the problems”, he added.
France meanwhile has pledged not to tax crypto-to-crypto transactions, highlighting its potentially permissive stance towards the phenomenon.
France Says It Will Block Facebook Libra in Europe
The French finance minister has said the nation plans to block Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency in the EU over concerns that it poses a threat to “monetary sovereignty.”
According to The Independent newspaper on Thursday, Bruno Le Maire, Economy and Finance Minister of France, said:
“I want to be absolutely clear: In these conditions, we cannot authorise the development of Libra on European soil.”
Le Maire was speaking at the opening of an OECD conference on blockchain and cryptocurrencies in Paris, France.
The minister has previously expressed concerns over Libra’s threat to national currencies, saying after the cryptocurrency’s debut in June that “It is out of question’’ that Libra be allowed to “become a sovereign currency. It can’t and it must not happen.”
