Facebook’s Cryptocurrency Libra is scheduled to be launched next year in June 2020. As of right now, the scrutiny over the project has increased and will continue to do so until proper measures have been put into place.
Concerns for the Libra from regulators and politicians range from money laundering to privacy and the risk of financial instability. “We want to make sure that if there are significant risks, they need to be addressed,” said Xiangmin Liu, the president of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which acts as the global standard-setter on anti-money laundering.
Last week a senior U.S. Treasury Officer said to reporters in Switzerland, “Libra must meet the highest standards for combating money laundering and terrorism financing if it is to get off the ground.”
As Facebook is global, Libra would be used in many countries. The concern over this is that the crypto policies and regulations vary from country to country. FATF which was established in 1989 to tackle money laundering has advised countries to tighten their oversight of cryptocurrency to stop laundering of cash and terrorism financing.
Liu said at a conference in London “The anonymity afforded by virtual assets is being exploited by serious criminals,” Liu said. “These activities are likely to be growing quickly, as law enforcement agencies are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.” and continued “We have talked about finding suspicious activity as being like finding a needle in a haystack. Well, that haystack is getting bigger and bigger, and is moving all the time.”
Cryptocurrency is not something that can be taken lightly as it is used virtually and can be transferred between almost any country worldwide. As mentioned in one of my earlier article’s Fortnite Money Laundering Issue Bigger Than Game, cryptocurrency is being used by money launderers more and more as it is less likely to leave any trail.