Russia may ban Facebook if US block Libra

Vladimir Putin

Russia may ban Facebook and Telegram if the US decides to block the launch of Libra.

According to President Vladimir Putin’s special representative for IT, Dmitry Peskov, if Libra launches without sufficient control measures, “the likelihood of Facebook being blocked” will increase in Russia.

Peskov did later admit that the decision does not depend on the Russian government, but the American one if they were to eventually block Libra or Telegram’s cryptocurrency.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will defend Libra before the House Financial Services committee on October 23.

Libra’s co-creator, David Marcus, came under intense scrutiny in front of the Senate in August, with officials lamenting the decision to base the company in Switzerland and the potential threat to the US Dollar.

Finance ministers in France also declared that they will “block Facebook’s Libra project” as it poses a threat to governments’ monetary sovereignty.

Russia has already made threats to block Facebook in the past in connection to issues with data storage.

Various high profile companies have now pulled out of the Libra association amid regulatory concerns. The latest of which was PayPal, who got cold feet after admitting they will focus on advancing existing business priorities.

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https://dev.coinrivet.com/paypal-pulls-out-of-libra-project/

Oliver Knight

Londoner ‘Ollie’ graduated from Birmingham City University with a journalism degree in 2016. He combines his writing with his love of crypto and blockchain here at Coin Rivet, saying “It disrupts well-established institutions (banks) while giving an avenue to the less fortunate to achieve financial freedom.” Like all true Londoners, his pet hate is… “People standing on the left-hand side of the escalators on the Tube!”.