Fed Chairman Powell Pumps Breaks on Libra and Discusses BTC

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell discussed Libra and BTC before a Congressional committee in a semi-annual testimony on monetary policy.

Basically what he said on Libra is Facebook should halt Libra while “concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, consumer protection, financial stability, etc” are addressed by regulators (this backs up what the Congressional finance committee has already said).

This has been reported in a negative light by some, but the reality is it is pretty much standard and expected. Powell expressed that he was pro innovation, but because Libra is such a big deal the roll out should be methodical. No real surprise here, Facebook likely accounted for this.

“It [Libra] is something that doesn’t fit neatly or easily within our regulatory scheme but it does have potentially systemic scale,” he said. “It needs a careful look, so I strongly believe we all need to be taking our time with this. The process of addressing these concerns should be a patient and careful one, not a sprint.”

On Bitcoin, Powell said, “Almost no one uses bitcoin for payments, they use it more as an alternative to gold. it’s a speculative store of value, like gold.”

He then says, “we haven’t seen it [widespread adoption] yet, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see it.”

You can watch the clip of the Bitcoin comments below.

So, just so we are clear. Jerome Powell talked about stable coins, Bitcoin, and scalability of Libra while talking to congress about cryptocurrency… and he compared BTC to gold and suggested widespread adoption and use of as a currency is possible.

So, while one might negatively focus on Libra concerns, others might focus on the positives. It is up to you, either way the videos above are interesting.