Top Senator Thinks Facebook is Playing with Fire with Libra

Top Democratic Senator on the Banking Committee, Sherrod Brown believes that social media giant Facebook is like a toddler setting fires.

The Senator made the remark this week because of concerns over Facebook’s cryptocurrency plans.

“Facebook’s not the company to do this. They’ve broken the public trust too many times,” said Brown in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

It was on Tuesday that Brown said the company was like a toddler setting fires at a Senate hearing, and said the company was “dangerous” and said it would be “crazy” to let Facebook “experiment” in banking.

“I’m hopeful that Facebook heard this today, heard the outcry from so many saying, ‘Stop, don’t do this’ not, ‘Slow down — want to work with you,’ it’s really, ‘Stop. You should not be the…new central bank for the world. You shouldn’t run this out of the Swiss bank account, currency operation.’ We don’t trust you to do that. You’ve betrayed the public interest so many times,” remarked Brown.

Facebook’s head of Calibra David Marcus told the committee that Facebook wouldn’t launch the project until it has addressed regulatory concerns.

Marcus had said, “We know we need to take the time to get this right. And I want to be clear: Facebook (FB) will not offer the Libra digital currency until we have fully addressed regulatory concerns and received appropriate approvals.”

“We have had preliminary discussions with FINMA and expect to engage with them on an appropriate regulatory framework for the Libra Association. The Association also intends to register with FinCEN as a money services business,” Marcus also said.

Disclaimer: We have no position in Facebook, Inc. Common Stock (NASDAQ: FB) and have not been compensated for this article.