(Forbes) The House Financial Services Committee sent out a press release noting that the Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, will testify before the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing titled “An Examination of Facebook And Its Impact On Financial And Housing Sectors.”
The press release noted Zuckerberg will be the sole witness at the hearing and also made mention of a letter to Facebook in July requesting an “immediate moratorium on the implementation of Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency, Libra, and its digital wallet, Calibra.”
Thus, it now appears that Mr. Mark Zuckerberg himself, rather than a digital representation of him on a “Zuck Buck” illustrated during the testimony on Facebook’s Libra in July, will be answering questions in person in two weeks before Congress.
Details of the hearing are here:
WHO: Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and CEO, Facebook
WHAT: Full Committee hearing entitled, “An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors.”
WHEN: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 at 10:00AM (EDT)
WHERE: 2128 Rayburn House Office Building
It was reported last Friday that the House Financial Services Committee was negotiations with Facebook on its October 29th hearing, where the COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg was going to testify. That hearing was put on hold based on Facebook’s agreement to have Mark Zuckerberg testify by January 2020. The press release mentioned nothing regarding the pending hearing with COO Sheryl Sandberg scheduled for October 29.
A previous article that I published as a contributor last week highlighted the amount of time and attention this Committee and Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) has been paying attention to with regards to Facebook, as well as cryptocurrency and blockchain as a result of the introduction of Facebook’s Libra.
Keeping Big Tech Out of Finance Act
The press release also mentioned the letter sent by Congress requesting Facebook to put a moratorium on its Project Libra as well as draft legislation called the “Keep Big Tech Out of Finance Act”.
The press release states how the legislation would prevent ‘large platform utilities’, “...like Facebook, from becoming chartered, licensed or registered as a U.S. financial institution (e.g. like taxpayer-backed banks, investment funds, and stock exchanges) or otherwise becoming affiliated with such financial institutions. The bill also prohibits large platform utilities from establishing, maintaining, or operating a digital asset that is intended to be widely used as medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, or any other similar function as defined by the Federal Reserve.”
