Blumenthal, Brown, Senators to Zuckerberg: Facebook Cannot be Trusted to Manage Cryptocurrency, Stop Launch of Diem, Novi Immediately

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), joined U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) to voice their opposition to Facebook’s revived effort to launch a cryptocurrency (“Diem”) and digital wallet (“Novi”). In light of yet another scandal involving Facebook’s failure to protect its users, the senators urged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to immediately discontinue the company’s pilot of Novi, announced this morning, and to commit not to bring Diem to market.

“Facebook is once again pursuing digital currency plans on an aggressive timeline and has already launched a pilot for a payments infrastructure network, even though these plans are incompatible with the actual financial regulatory landscape—not only for Diem specifically, but also for stablecoins in general,” the senators wrote in their letter to Zuckerberg. “Unfortunately, Facebook’s decision to pursue a digital currency and payments network is just one more example of the company ‘moving fast and breaking things’ (and in too many cases, misleading Congress in order to do so). Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient.”

The full text of the letter is available here.

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