Director of Libra, cryptocurrency Facebook: we do not act 'like pirates'

"We do not intend to act as the PiratesHe said Bertrand Pérez, general director of the Libra badociation launched by Facebook, in an interview with AFP in which he tries to rebadure on the project of cryptocurrency of the American giant, which gives rise to so much suspicion.

His project raises comments and reticence at the political level. Do you understand these concerns?

We are told about the risk to the currencies of savings more fragile But the first thing has State when you want to prevent your currency from weakening, you need to put in place a control of change, (and) nothing prevents you from implementing a lock of the platforms of exchange of Libra, if it seems necessary.

(…) It is important to remember that the blockchain allows a level of transparency important for transactions.

It's a technology new, it is normal that regulators are vigilant, this is of course why we announced the Libra project one year before its launch; We knew we had to work with the regulators. But if, for example, the European Central Bank (BCE) denies us the right to operate in Europe, we will accept it. We do not intend to act as the Pirates, we respect the legislation.

How are your negotiations with the different regulators going?

We are based in GinThat's why we started talking to Finma (Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, Editor's note), who identified us as a payment system, not like a bank or something else. Therefore, we can start the procedures for a request of registration, incorporating the necessary standards for this purpose.

So far, most regulators around the world have not raised the issue of cryptocurrencies just because the volume of transactions This was not significant, so they waited before pronouncing. But now our customers are important enough for the authorities responsible decides to define a framework (…)

We also want to prevent Libra from falling into the volatility other crypto-currencies. Since this is a means of payment, for example for online purchases, we must guarantee the users that they will not lose money if they own the Delivered. We will tie it to a basket of five currencies (US dollar, euro, yen, pound sterling, Singapore Dollar, Ed.) To ensure its stability (…)

In addition to the normative aspects, what are the next steps before the actual launch?

We must first finish our normative of the governance. This is a subject on which the 28 members are currently working (…).

Then comes the whole technical aspect, with the Implementation of validation nodes (transactions, Ed), in each of our members, who have been selected to host these nodes because of their great computing capacity and to have the custom to manage aspects of Security.

Then we will have to unite the nodes, then the phase of tests of functionality and of the results.

Our goal is that in the launch By the mid-2020, we have the capacity to process about 1,000 transactions per second, then exceed that number.