Facebook's Libra has failed in current form, says Swiss President

The basket of assets backing Facebook’s Libra stablecoin needs to change in order for the project to be accepted by regulators, according to Switzerland’s President.

“Central banks will not accept the basket of currencies underpinning it”

Reuters reported on Dec. 27 that Swiss finance minister and outgoing president Ueli Maurer said that Libra won’t be approved because central banks won’t accept the basket of currencies behind it. 

He concluded:

The project, in this form, has thus failed.

Libra’s conflict with regulators

Earlier this month, Libra’s whitepaper was updated to remove dividends payable to those investors, aside from eliminating a potential conflict of interest. The change is thought to be introduced to avoid the asset being classified as a security. 

The announcement came after some United States lawmakers sponsored a bill defining stablecoins as securities. Libra, on the other hand, insists that its stablecoin is a commodity.

Meanwhile, the United States is not the only country pushing back against the proposed Libra project. In November, a draft document to be discussed by the European Union’s finance ministers stated that impeding Libra’s development is an option on the table. 

Also last month, Libra announced that despite the regulatory concern over the project, the development has gone forward with 30 projects and 51,000 transactions having already been logged on the test network over the two previous months.