Facebook’s Libra and other cryptocurrencies must achieve the highest standards of U.S. regulatory compliance prior to any launch, a U.S. Treasury official has said.
All cryptocurrencies operating in all or part of the U.S. will need to comply with rules aimed to prevent financial crimes, speaking to reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, Sigal Mandelker, under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said.
“Whether it’s bitcoin, Ethereum, Libra, our message is the same to all of these companies: anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism has to be built into your design from the get-go,” Mandelker said.
As a reminder, back in August, data protection chiefs published a joint statement in which raised the concerns over the privacy risks posed by Facebook’s Libra. The U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), data privacy commissioners from Australia, Canada, Albania, Burkina Faso, the EU, the U.K., the U.S., shared concerns that “while Facebook and [its crypto wallet-focused entity] Calibra have made broad public statements about privacy, they have failed to specifically address the information handling practices that will be in place to secure and protect personal information.”
