Facebook’s blockchain lead David Marcus told lawmakers he would be willing to accept 100 percent of his salary in the social media giant’s proposed Libra cryptocurrency.
During a Senate Banking Committee hearing on the controversial project Tuesday, the ranking member of the panel, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), repeatedly asked Marcus if he trusted Libra enough to put skin in the game this way.
“You really think people should trust you with their hard-earned money, I think it’s delusional,” Brown said, after enumerating Facebook’s history of privacy abuses. He then posed the question: “Will you accept all of your compensation in that new currency?”
Marcus initially sidestepped the question, saying that Libra is “not designed as a substitute for bank accounts.” After Brown pressed him, the Facebook executive said he would “trust all of my assets in Libra – yes, I would.”
Only after the lawmaker pressed him again on the specific question about salary did Marcus answer in the affirmative.
The hearing, which is expected to run into the early afternoon, was full of such exchanges in the first hour.
For example, when Marcus reiterated his talking point that Facebook would be only one of many companies involved in the Libra project, Brown shot back: “You know better than that, only Facebook [as a social media company] has access to 2 billion people.”
Watch the hearing live here.
The Senate committee hearing was scheduled in the days after Libra was unveiled in June; the House Financial Services Committee will hold its own version tomorrow.
David Marcus image via Senate Banking Committee.
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Nikhilesh De, Khareem Sudlow
