U.S. Senators demanded more clarity on Meta’s plan to launch its stablecoin, as they sense that the Trump administration might waive off restrictions established by the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act. In a letter addressed to the Co-founder and the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, the Senators stated that, according to the GENIUS Act, only “subsidiaries and affiliates that are not majority owned by the company” will be able to issue their own stablecoins.
However, “the GENIUS Act includes a provision that enables the Trump administration to provide a waiver from these porous restrictions altogether.” As such, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) requested that Meta answer eight questions so that “Congress and the public fully understand the extent of Meta’s plans.”
They stated, “Big Tech companies’ issuing or controlling their own private currencies, like a stablecoin, would threaten competition across the economy, erode financial privacy, and cede control of the U.S. money supply to monopolistic platforms that have a history of abusing their power.”
The Senators recalled a similar scenario back in 2019, where Meta tried to issue its private currency called the Libra stablecoin project. The project, however, was met with overwhelming bipartisan and international opposition. In fact, the Senators think, “ If Meta controlled its own stablecoin, the company could further pry into consumers’ transactions and commercial activity.”
With 3.5 billion daily users, Meta could use its “own payments system to push users to its other nonfinancial business lines or choke off access to small businesses or emerging competitors,” stated the letter.
