Global Regulators Debate Stablecoin Risks With JPMC

Global central bank officials met with leaders from both Facebook’s Libra Association and JPMorgan to discuss policies and regulation around new cryptocurrencies, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said in a press release on Monday (Sept. 16).

Stablecoins such as Facebook’s planned Libra cryptocurrency were the focus of discussion at the “Conference on global stablecoins” in Basel, Switzerland. The BIS is an umbrella organization for the world’s largest central banks.

The Group of Seven (G7) countries called the meeting to analyze stablecoins like Facebook’s Libra and JPMorgan’s JPM Coin. Fnality International was also questioned about its coin. The G7 working group on stablecoins is chaired by Benoît Cœuré, chair of the BIS-hosted Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, and will produce a final report on its work by mid-October, according to the release.

“As a new technology, stablecoins are largely untested, especially on the scale required to run a global payment system,” Cœuré said in the release. “They give rise to a number of serious risks related to public policy priorities. The bar for regulatory approval will be high.”

As a stablecoin, Libra is designed to be asset-backed, unlike the cryptocurrency bitcoin, and is also backed by a different digital ledger. David Marcus, head the Libra Association, said the coin wouldn’t “threaten the sovereignty of Nations when it comes to money,” CNBC reported on Monday (Sept. 16).

“We will continue to engage with Central Banks, Regulators, and lawmakers to ensure we address their concerns through Libra’s design and operations,” Marcus said in a Tweet.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England were among the 26 central banks taking part in the one-day conference.

The G7 is currently led by France, which established the committee chaired by Cœuré in order to scrutinize Libra and other cryptocurrencies. The Financial Stability Board, chaired by a Federal Reserve deputy governor, reports to the G7 and is also planning to examine Facebook’s plans for Libra.

The Libra Association is a coalition of 28 members put together by Facebook to help bring the cryptocurrency to fruition. Backers include Visa, Mastercard, Uber, Spotify and the Facebook subsidiary Calibra, among others. The members all made a non-binding promise to invest at least $10 million.