After Facebook announced that they were planning to release a cryptocurrency named libra in 2020, the project was met with a lot of criticism, not least from politicians and lawmakers around the world.
Among other things, US President Donald Trump and the same country’s Congress have sharply criticized the project.
Now the criticism seems to have had consequences. Some of the libra project’s early backers now consider leaving. At least three of them are having internal discussions on how to withdraw from the project, the Financial Times reports.
Discontent is growing
The companies are part of the so-called Libra Association, a consortium based in Switzerland that will control the planned cryptocurrency.
To be included, the companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Uber and Spotify, will have to pay $10 million each.
Trijo News has previously reported that several companies in the Libra Association have been hesitant about the project and that they have not yet decided whether to pay the money required to become a member of the consortium.
And now more of them seem to express concern about the project’s future and doubts about their own role in it.
“I think it’s going to be difficult for partners who want to be seen as in compliance [with their own regulators] to be out there supporting [libra]”, says a representative from one of the companies.
No one wants to publicly support the project
None of the companies in the Libra Association seem to want to support the project publicly either, which reportedly started to irritate Facebook.
“Facebook is tired of being the only people putting their neck out”, says one of Libra’s backers to the Financial Times.
Neither Facebook nor the Libra Association want to comment on the story.
