NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc will face unprecedented regulatory scrutiny over a new digital currency that the social media company hopes will become globally recognized legal tender within a year.
"It's a complete disaster from a regulatory perspective," said Barry Lynn, executive director of antitrust advocacy group the Open Markets Institute."This is a corporation that's got fires all over the world with regulators. It's only going to get worse." "The scrutiny that we've seen is something that we expected and welcome," a Facebook spokesman said."We announced this early by design in order to have this discourse in the open and gather feedback."
"They will not get a free pass anywhere," said Sean Park, Founder and Chief Investment Officer, at Anthemis, a venture capital firm that backs digital financial services companies."And, given their intention to be global, they will ultimately need literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of licenses from hundreds of different regulators across the globe."
"Just in terms of new regulators, it's a whole new ball game," said Jeff Bandman, a former U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission official who now runs the fintech regulatory consultancy Bandman Advisors."A year is enough time to meet with regulators, figure out where the real trouble spots are and potentially scale it back to something narrower."
However, the costs could be substantial before income starts rolling in. It will need to set up an internal compliance framework with staffers who screen transactions for illicit activity and verify customer identities.
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Source: BusinessTimes - 🏆 15. / 51 Read more »